The thought experiment in this interesting 2019 article from Michael Lachmann and Sara Walker on the contrast between #life and #living is not representative, because von Neumann’s UCs are non-#autopoietic and don’t print themselves so can’t #grow and #evolve.
Imagine you have built a sophisticated 3D printer called Alice, the first to be able to print itself. As with von Neumann’s constructor, you supply it with information specifying its own plan, and a mechanism for copying that information: Alice is now a complete von Neumann constructor. Have you created new life on Earth?
https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-schrodingers-cat-say-about-3d-printers-on-mars
The difference lies in the fact that UC “mechanisms” are not operational until their production is fully finished and any #error will most probably prevent the mechanism from working, while most living and growing “assemblies” can work and repair themselves while they are growing.
The bottom line is that life cannot be created. It has to emerge from mechanical non-life.
#M_Polany in “Life’s Irreducible Structure” (1968) points out that using deterministic #machines to explain “the physics of #life” is backward thinking, because machines are devised and built by humans to resemble organisms and to serve the purpose of their design, and can therefore only be a #biological, not a #physical analogy.
Or in other words, we are interested either in the control #rules of the machine or the physical #laws of causality that make the machine work.