On the surface, this appears profoundly stupid. We don't need a unified interdisciplinary theory of life, <i>beyond the one inherent in a proper understanding of physics since life exists within and is made of physics</i>. 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.<p>respect_for_case--;