It’s worth noting that coming up with configurations that require intelligence (or at least life) to produce isn’t that hard. The only really obvious one I know of in our universe is bulk refrigeration below 2.7K, but given the simplicity of that one I strongly suspect there are others.
On the likelihood of such a state inducing a large-scale phase change, I’m in agreement. It seems implausible unless the universe is precisely tuned to allow it.
Expected value of taking M without information is 0.5 −1 + 0.5 4 = 1.5, not 1. VoI in this case is 0.5 utilon.