I'd like to see you try to give an example of information that isn't embodied.
Well js1138, for openers I’d say: all the information pertaining to all existents in the Universe in the past (much of which still lives in human consciousness); and all the information pertaining to the not-yet-realized possibilities of the Universe that will manifest in the future. I imagine that we denizens of the present time do not see let alone “embody” in language all the (astronomically huge) amount of information, realized or yet-to-be realized, that is floating all around us (so to speak).
All of which probably sounds pretty useless to you. So let me try to relate aspects of the insight to certain important lines of modern scientific thought.
Superposition (more specifically quantum superposition) is the situation that obtains when an object simultaneously possesses two or more values for an observable quantity such as the position or energy of a particle. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is impossible to see both values at once. And this is a problem when setting up an experimental design, for one must decide which one wants to see, particle or wave. The experiment cannot in principle be set up to test both mass and velocity at once.
So it seems to me, we have an “observer problem” here — or not “problem” exactly, but issue. For the experimenter must decide in which “mode” of the superposition he wants to work, particle or wave.
Now I figure FWIW the “information” contained in the eclipsed part of the superposition — the part of the complementary duality that the observer didn’t choose to focus on — contains information that is not “embodied.” Only the part the observer intended can give an informational report.
This “report” is a second issue of the observer problem: It already suffers from perspectival limits of observation. Yet usually it is intended for a public audience.
Now if all this still sounds pretty nutz, we can take our problem up to Schröedinger’s perspective. It was he who took the quantum superposition problem up to the “Newtonian level,” so to make it visible to human beings walking around in the 4D universe that Newtonian mechanics so ably describes. He did it by means of a thought experiment that was meticulously arranged to “mimic” actual technical capabilities available at the time.
His question was: Is the cat dead or alive or both? [Please Google “Schröedinger’s Cat” for details of the set-up of the experiment.]
As it turned out, all of these states are superposed states; the cat is all of them. But the cat that is “real” for us is decidedly not the cat we do not and maybe cannot see.
So this would be a third issue of the “observer problem”….
But I digress. My point is that there may be non-observed, non-actualized informational components that may become actualized and observable as the Universe evolves. In which case, our definition of Reality would have to be expanded to comprehend both “existent” and “non-existent” modes.
Wheeler joked about his friend Bohr in so many words: Niels says if it isn’t observed, it doesn’t exist.
I gather this is the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Funny thing is, I find a lot to admire in it, and first and foremost Niels Bohr himself.
Thanks for writing, js1138!