Dear Paul,
I find your proposal intriguing and intelligent. The analogy you draw, between the 'ultraviolet catastrophe' and the discrepancy between theoretical and observed values of the cosmological constant, seems apt. In that context, however, I would point out that Planck's "solution" (to the former) was purely a mathematical device--the beginning, not the end, of many unresolved issues.
I also liked your "mailbox" metaphor. It might prove helpful in clarifying the nature of 'information', which seems to be a glibly misused concept these days. In a number of submitted essays, there is reference to information being 'stored' or 'encoded', when the author simply means that there is continuity within reality itself, and from one description of reality to another, (at another time, for instance). While organisms explicitly need to model their environment, encoding it in some representation, there is no reason to assume that physical reality in general does this. The information is encoded by physicists, not necessarily by the world they study.
Thanks and best wishes,
Dan
