Aaronson’s “Is ‘information is physical’ contentful?” also seems relevant to this discussion (though I’m not sure exactly how to apply his arguments):
But we should’ve learned by now to doubt this sort of argument. There’s no general principle, in our universe, saying that you can hide as many bits as you want in a physical object, without those bits influencing the object’s observable properties. On the contrary, in case after case, our laws of physics seem to be intolerant of “wallflower bits,” which hide in a corner without talking to anyone. If a bit is there, the laws of physics want it to affect other nearby bits and be affected by them in turn.
…
In summary, our laws of physics are structured in such a way that even pure information often has “nowhere to hide”: if the bits are there at all in the abstract machinery of the world, then they’re forced to pipe up and have a measurable effect. And this is not a tautology, but comes about only because of nontrivial facts about special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and thermodynamics. And this is what I think people should mean when they say “information is physical.”
Aaronson’s “Is ‘information is physical’ contentful?” also seems relevant to this discussion (though I’m not sure exactly how to apply his arguments):
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3327