The Information Theory of Life

This also recapitulates much of what is theorized in "The Selfish Gene" (Richard Dawkins, 1976). So much so it's a bit surprising that the article doesn't make a single reference to that work.

The most helpful paper seems to be this one: From Entropy to Information: Biased Typewriters and the Origin of Life, http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.06988

Refers to the Avida evolution simulator: https://github.com/devosoft/avida/wiki

I imagine the universe as a bunch of disparate pieces that can combine in myriad ways.

Some of those ways create the conditions for other pieces to combine in a similar way. Once those pieces exist they actually change the world around them toward their own existence - sometimes in concert with other ways that promote mutual survival. Life is a very powerful version of this that actually converts other matter into itself.

This happens at all levels of the universe - from quarks to humans to stars.

This idea was first explored, I believe, by G.J. Chaitin in 1970 in his essay 'To a Mathematical Definition of "Life"'

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/sicact.pdf

Cool to see further work done on this.

Makes sense. Life is thermodynamics, and thermodynamics is statistical physics, and statistical physics is information theory.