A few offshoots from this line of thinking… Where do viruses sit on this scale of grayness? Yes, viruses have organic molecules, information storage systems,

A few offshoots from this line of thinking… Where do viruses sit on this scale of grayness? Yes, viruses have organic molecules, information storage systems, and compartmentalization. No, viruses do not have metal catalysis (correct me if I’m wrong) nor do they have energy currencies (they rely on hosts for energy). Viruses appear rather gray indeed. Can the grayness framework be modified/extended to describe superorganisms? Superorganisms like bee colonies are only mentioned in passing and the authors do not try to apply their grayness framework. Organic molecules and metal catalysis aren’t as relevant beyond the molecular scale, but information storage systems, energy currencies, and compartmentalization apply just as well to superorganisms. Perhaps those are the more generalizable attributes of life. I’m reminded of concepts from Schrödinger’s What Is Life?. Schrödinger describes local reduction of entropy to be a key feature — combining energy currencies with compartmentalization is one way to achieve that. Separately, he discusses the hereditary mechanism and suggests an “aperiodic crystal” could encode heritable information. What would be the contents of a sister article titled “The Grayness of the Origin of Consciousness”? I would love to see an outline.