Comment by beaconstudios

This also ties in to the cybernetic concept of the law of requisite variety, where adaptable entities need to be able to compress their sense-data about their environment into an internal model that corresponds in complexity to their need to act - this necessarily involves compression as the totality of reality is effectively infinite and can't fit between your ears.

There's also the Hutter prize that ties data compression directly to intelligence through Kolmagorov complexity.

Information and cybernetic theories cut pretty close to a general theory of intelligence in my opinion!