Compression Resolution Duality

This paper develops a categorical distinction between two kinds of informational object: compressed descriptions, which specify a full admissible configuration space without selecting any particular element, and resolved descriptions, which contain selection information identifying one particular element as actual in a structural sense. The distinction is anchored in the Kolmogorov structure function decomposition, which independently identifies model and selection components as formally separable individual-level facts in individual strings, and motivates the extension to descriptions in general by analogy. On this basis, the paper develops and argues for the Compression--Resolution Duality: no single informational object can simultaneously be compressed and resolved with respect to the same admissible configuration space. This is the paper's central formal result. The paper then develops two structural consequences. The Hierarchical Asymmetry argues that elimination across levels is local while resolution is perspectivally global: from the perspective of any resolved description, the containing descriptions are presupposed as resolved from within that description, whereas compressed descriptions generate no such chain. The Boundedness interpretation, motivated by the Hierarchical Asymmetry, proposes that resolved descriptions are self-limiting---unable to represent the containing structure without access to compressed information they lack. These structural claims are explored in application to the relationship between the universal wavefunction and any particular experienced quantum outcome: from within a resolved description of an outcome, other outcomes are not absent from what the wavefunction encodes---they are inaccessible from within that descriptive environment. The paper does not adjudicate between interpretations of quantum mechanics. The analysis is structural and informational throughout, making no claims about physical dynamics, temporal processes, or empirical matters.