[esoterae]

I think their point was that there is no empirical definition of information as it relates to the observer. The expurimint you cite worked upon a physical system that already had a state prior to the expurimint.

If everything is information, then nothing is.

A disordered system still has state. You just don't know what it is.

[Jonghwa_Lee]

Fair point on the semantics. But I'm not talking about subjective 'knowledge.' I'm talking about the thermodynamic cost to maintain a state.

Landauer showed that information processing is physical (heat). I’m just extending that logic: if the universe has to process too much state data in one spot, the cost isn't just heat—it's lag (Time Dilation).

It doesn't matter if we observe the mess; the system still has to render it.