The rise of rigid ideology is a reciprocal function of the simplicity of the language with which it embellishes itself. This is not a moral judgement, nor an apologetic for autocracy, but a statistical inevitability: simplicity wins because simplicity persists. Such narratives are not the only dynamics at work, but they gain disproportionate attention.
Words are not just inside us. They form a field between us, a relational medium where every utterance alters probabilities. We process signals between our ears, but the real computation happens in the shared environment: a dynamical structure, an attractor, a potential well. Think of it as an entropic cavity—patterns of language settling into recurrent grooves, not by force of truth, but by force of recurrence. The field is elastic: it does not lock into one pole of ideology, but sustains itself as a complex wave, a self-propagating system shaped by communication across local inertial frames of time and attention.
The mechanics are stark. Shorter, simpler words have greater recombinatorial freedom. They pair with more other words in more ways. They propagate more easily and decay more slowly. Over time, this statistical advantage deepens into persistence. Repetition increases familiarity and judged truth even in the absence of veridicality (Zajonc 1968; Hasher, Goldstein, Toppino 1977). Falsehood spreads faster and further than truth in online networks because novelty and arousal amplify copying (Vosoughi, Roy, Aral 2018). Simplicity of form, rather than complexity of content, determines survival.
This is why rigid ideologies reduce themselves to slogans, binaries, absolutes. Not because they are coherent, but because entropy ensures their endurance. Negativity further accelerates persistence, since negative information has greater psychological impact than positive (Baumeister et al. 2001). Emotional and moralised language increases diffusion probability (Brady et al. 2017). The probabilistic field of communication amplifies the forms most likely to persist, not those most likely to correspond to truth.
The paradox is that to describe this process requires abstraction, nuance, and complexity. It feels as though only a complex narrative can explain why simple narratives triumph. That perception itself is a barrier. Complexity deters attention; simplicity attracts it. Yet once the threshold is crossed, the logic reveals itself as simple: the ratchet of entropy pushes culture toward the highest-probability forms. Rigid ideology is not an aberration but a harmonic of the field.
To visualise this requires a shift in thought. The field is non-local and recursive. Each signal both emerges from and reshapes the attractor. Each repetition deepens the cavity. The collective, not the individual, is the substrate. Cognitive processes such as predictive coding, which minimise surprise by reinforcing repeated cues (Rao & Ballard 1999; Friston 2010), align with network-level processes like preferential attachment, where persistence snowballs into mass (Barabási & Albert 1999). Complex contagion shows that reinforcement across clustered ties increases adoption probability (Centola & Macy 2007). These are not isolated psychological or political mechanisms; they are expressions of the same entropic geometry.
What appears as conviction or persuasion is, in statistical terms, drift within an entropic basin. The rise of ideology is less a contest of arguments than a property of language itself. The system sustains not one pole but the oscillating wave of communication itself. Attention distributes elastically across this field, and influence is carried not by truth in content but by recurrence in form.
This is the ratchet: once a simple form gains persistence, it locks into orbit. The more it circulates, the stronger its pull; the stronger the pull, the more it circulates. Escape requires recognising that the attractor is the field itself, not any single narrative. Entropy is not opposed to meaning. Entropy is the geometry in which meaning persists.
References
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure.
Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977). Frequency and the “illusion of truth.”
Baumeister, R. F., et al. (2001). Bad is stronger than good.
Rao, R. P. N., & Ballard, D. H. (1999). Predictive coding in the visual cortex.
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?
Centola, D., & Macy, M. (2007). Complex contagions and the weakness of long ties.
Barabási, A.-L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks.
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online.
Brady, W. J., et al. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content.
Daedelus Kite 
One reply on “The Entropy of Simplicity: Language, Ideology, and the Field”
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure.
1. Landmark study showing that simple repetition generates liking.
2. In this context, persistence arises not from meaning but from recurrence.
3. Truth of language emerges as orbit: recurrence bends attention and deepens the entropic cavity, independent of veridical depth.
—
Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977). Frequency and the “illusion of truth.”
1. Demonstrates that repeated statements feel truer, even when known to be false.
2. In this context, frequency trumps semantic correspondence as a determinant of belief.
3. Entropy operates as the governing logic: repetition inflates the orbit, each pass reinforcing the self-sustaining geometry of the field.
—
Baumeister, R. F., et al. (2001). Bad is stronger than good.
1. Shows the disproportionate weight of negative over positive signals.
2. In this context, grievance and fear dominate attention economies.
3. Negativity acts as the resonant overtone of entropy, deepening the attractor and binding identity to the darker harmonics of the field.
—
Rao, R. P. N., & Ballard, D. H. (1999). Predictive coding in the visual cortex.
1. Frames the brain as an inference engine, minimising error by predicting input.
2. In this context, repeated cues gain more weight as expectations become tuned to them.
3. Multiplicity sculpts priors into an eigenframe: entropy does not just fill the field but defines what the system expects to see.
—
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?
1. Proposes minimisation of free energy as the organising principle of the brain.
2. In this context, cognition favours predictability, conserving resources through redundancy.
3. Self-propagation is the geometry of survival: the field coheres by reinforcing its lowest-entropy trajectories, embedding coherence as identity.
—
Centola, D., & Macy, M. (2007). Complex contagions and the weakness of long ties.
1. Establishes that multiple reinforcements, not single exposures, drive adoption.
2. In this context, clustered repetition stabilises collective behaviour.
3. Influence arises through harmonic reinforcement, the orbit sustained by resonance across the entropic field.
—
Barabási, A.-L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks.
1. Reveals the dynamics of preferential attachment in scale-free networks.
2. In this context, persistence compounds into dominance, creating hubs of influence.
3. The orbit inflates toroidally: persistence loops onto itself, generating a non-orientable topology where multiplicity becomes architecture.
—
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online.
1. Finds that falsehood spreads faster and further than truth.
2. In this context, novelty and arousal outperform semantic accuracy.
3. Meaning becomes an artefact of entropic multiplicity: truth of language eclipses truth in language as persistence defines reality.
—
Brady, W. J., et al. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content.
1. Shows that moral-emotional language spreads more widely across networks.
2. In this context, affect accelerates circulation and consolidation.
3. Emotion functions as the field’s resonant frequency, amplifying recursive self-propagation and binding coherence through harmonic attractors.—
LikeLike