Dynamic Stability

Persistence through time by continual change rather than inertness — in dynamical-systems terms a stable limit cycle, not a fixed point. Adapted from Addy Pross's "dynamic kinetic stability," with "kinetic" dropped so it applies to programs as well as molecules. A replicator is more dynamically stable than a non-replicator because it will still be found later, in many copies; hence Darwinian selection is a special case of the Second Law once stability is extended to populations. Life is defined as self-modifying computronium arising from selection for it, and the "tent" model of value in chapter 10 shows it has a hard perimeter (death) but an underdetermined interior — where personality and free will live.