I read the whole book. Sure an editor could have tightened it up, but it was an enjoyable tour of so many topics that I enjoy. So often I will read a paper or book on just one of the topics, seeing so many of them together was fun and made me think about how they all intertwine more. I have studied biology, physics, computer science and finance so I love bouncing across them. It explores defining life and then intelligence and while I might have a similar, but slightly different definition of intelligence personally I loved comparing them.

There was a concept buried in it that before a system evolves replication it first will learn how to copy badly, then better, then replicate. This might feel a minor and obvious statement, but I have never seen it called out before and it is a concept I have discussed many times with people since. Some obvious things such as if I want a system to obtain replication my initial selection filter should be for copying. I am able to induce replication in a system for less input energy via this process. But this can also be flipped around and being hyper aware of systems that are copying badly knowing they are much more likely to phase shift to full replication shortly. I see this everywhere from ideas, startups, and even in finance.

And to nerd snipe everyone here, I spotted a bug in the brainfuck which is still on the online copy, can you find it?