[brmj]

On the surface, this appears profoundly stupid. We don't need a unified interdisciplinary theory of life, beyond the one inherent in a proper understanding of physics since life exists within and is made of physics. We need postulate nothing new to explain this. Instead, he attempts to solve the problem by essentially replacing known, fairly well understood science with an all-encompassing phlogiston theory of the universe that can be fit to anything because it is complex, non-mathematical and semi-informally specified. I encourage any one with an afternoon to spare to try and read the paper, perhaps with frequent trips to lesswrong when something seems confusing or otherwise suspect. I don't have the time to read 100 pages of this. I've skimmed parts of it, but it all looks very crankish.

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