AX-005: Substrate Requirement
Statement (one sentence)
Information does not “float free”; it must be instantiated in some substrate.
Intended meaning (2-5 sentences)
Any distinction that makes a difference (a bit, a state, a form) must be “in” something: a carrier, medium, or state space. This is a constraint against purely disembodied information claims inside the formal layer.
What this is NOT claiming
- Not that the substrate must be “material” in the everyday sense.
- Not that we already know the substrate’s full physics.
Downstream commitments
- Any informational primitive introduced later must declare its carrier/state space.
Enables / supports
Vulnerabilities / critique points
- “Math objects ‘carry’ information without physical substrate.”
Best replies (tight, logical)
- Mathematical descriptions are not the same as instantiated states; the axiom is about reality’s information being realized, not about symbols on paper.