> actual human books vs possible permutations of characters and spaces

You're making the assumption that anything produced by a human necessarily contains more useful information than random noise does. This is false. Even when only considering human intelligence, it's entirely possible to absorb information that makes you stupider, not smarter; learning is only valuable if you actually learn the right things.

>Even when only considering human intelligence, it's entirely possible to absorb information that makes you stupider, not smarter

I'd say this exchange is a fine example of that :)