Q: do you think the "no-life" to "life" transition... that first step to the first living cell.... was a bigger and more complex step than all of the evolution of lifeforms that has happened since?
A: the free energy way of looking at life suggests that, 1) there isn't any
kind of border between life and not-life. homeostatic dynamics arise
within all systems, and just progressively increase in richness when possible. there were probably
lots of intermediate steps between autocatalytic RNA sets and modern
"cells". and 2) each additional step is only meaningful in the context
that it arose in. the organizational level of, e.g. what we call "life"
is just the tip of an iceberg of systems dynamics. the right way to
think of the non-living world isn't as a static or dead -- it has its
own rich dynamics, upon which the steps toward life are just little
nudgings that reorganize those dynamics.
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