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.
>The organism is shown to be, like a machine, a system which works according to two different principles: its structure serves as a boundary condition harnessing the physical-chemical processes by which its organs perform their functions. Thus, this system may be called ***a system under dual control*** (*emphasis mine*). Morphogenesis, the process by which the #structure of living beings develops, can then be likened to the shaping of a machine which will act as a boundary for the laws of inanimate nature.
...
In the machine, our principal interest lay in the effects of the boundary conditions, while in an experimental setting, we are interested in the natural processes controlled by the boundaries."
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.