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Coming up with proper representation for your state is almost always worth it. If anything it's the opposite of premature optimisation - normalise first, only denormalise after you've proven that it's needed.

Huh? This isn’t premature optimization unless you consider trying to write correct code “optimizing”.

The issue isn’t booleans the issue is that the code doesn’t handle all the states described by the two booleans, when all are possible.

Make the impossible states unrepresentable using an enum of only the possible boolean combinations.

Isn't that exactly what the article prescribes?

Did you read the context?

No I read wrong and missed it. If all four states are actually possible an enum can still be a win if you have a compiler that can check for exhaustive switch case statements. Or especially if updating a system where it used to be only three were valid and now something changed so that all four are.