Information content in a signal rises with its unpredictability to the receiver.

Evidence

So to maximize the information carried by our coded audio signal, we first need to maximize the surprise value of the audio signal. This is done by the signal redundancy removal stage. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2594

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to information-theory notions of surprise/entropy and to predictive coding models of auditory perception — both give the same intuition that brains and codecs exploit predictability.
• DEFINE: Introduces ‘surprise value’ as the operative quantity for perceptual/coding efficiency.