So, you're saying that in order for a state to contain information, the state must contain that information. Duh! Why is this even being argued? It's bewildering to me how you can insist that certain non-obvious things are obvious, yet not see how "existence" is trivially obvious.The question of the existence of the conjecture is more relevant here per the “binary” point. For every “thing” in the mind, there must be first a hardware representation of its existence before further processing is done, otherwise how do you know what you’re even processing bits about?? You don’t know 9182929 switches are reflecting the query to begin with!
Let’s build a computer that’s going to model the Goldbach question’s potential.
Does the question have to exist as physical states before you employ its inquiry? The question is a thing that must exist or not exist before it has operational significance!
Or, maybe you mean something else. Maybe you mean that, before the computer can model Goldbach's conjecture, it must must make a true/false "existence" claim on whether its internal states contain the information about the conjecture itself. But that implies that the computer already knows about the conjecture, otherwise, how would it determine whether or not the conjecture existed as an internal state?
Let's unravel this all the way down. How does a computer know it is being asked a question, any question? According to you, the computer has to first determine whether the question "exists" or "not exists". But how does it do that? It has to compare the question to something it already knows, right? Before it can say "this question exists", it needs to compare the question to some other set of internal states that the computer can pattern match on. But what about the first question it received? How does the computer know that the first question it received "exists"?
Then there's the "not exists" problem. Before a computer knows a concept, such as "question" or "dog", how does it determine if the input it receives is "not question" or "not dog"? It literally can't. Ah, you say, "But the computer can tell something is there, and that's the opposite of non-existence." Ah, I say, "But there is always something there -- there is never a time when something is not there." This constant stream of somethings is precisely what we experience. Information processors differentiate and organize the stream by forming concepts.
When you examine it, boil it down to its essence, "existence" is an empty concept because everything exists. "Existence" is trivially obvious. Every time you mention "existence" a philosophical puppy commits suicide.
"What dice?" and "what space?" are not true/false questions. We can go as low-level as you want, for the universe -- contrary to Einstein's wishes -- is always playing dice.This is not assuming low level enough. What dice? What question about the dice? In what space? Those are the true-false questions that even afford further questions of probablistic nature like that!
At this very instant there is a lone neutron is floating around your room. It has a half-life of about 15 minutes. True or false: in the next 10 minutes it will decay into a proton.