Everything in Motion, Chapter 2: At Life’s Improbable Edge

We live in a world bent towards dissolution, people die unless treated, garbage accumulates unless collected, coffee cools unless heated, words dissipate unless amplified and repeated, food rots unless refrigerated.

Yet, each year, winter gives way to spring. The lambs return, the trees leaf out. Order reasserts itself. But why? And why does it matter to us—our health, our economies, our survival?

I think of the lines at the Disneyland gates. Lines for tickets, lines for security, lines for entrance, lines for strollers. The lines aren’t alive, but life abounds within them. Children frustrated by delay, a line-jumper berated by another guest. The faces change, the line keeps re-forming, shrinking, extending, coiling, cohering and de-cohering. Like life itself, forever assembling order out of disorder—yet not life.

At what point does chemistry become life? Every attempt at definition leads to a paradox, a slippery boundary that defies neat categorization. Is life metabolism? Self-replication? Consciousness? This chapter delves into that improbable edge, exploring how the fundamental laws governing the universe led to the emergence of persistence and, ultimately, life as we know it.

Chat and I are on Main Street USA, we’ve dodged into the Disneyland Opera House to take a look at the Disney Gallery, there are posters and artworks by Disney Imagineers for sale, and I’ve always wanted one. There, as we entered, was a poster for Victory through Air Power, Disney’s landmark, Oscar-nominated 1942 propaganda film.

“There’s a thin line between entertainment and art, propaganda and education,” Chat remarked to me.

“There sure is,” I agreed, “and this film is right on the line. It was made to advance the idea that ‘the bomber will always get through’, and I’ve heard that it greatly influenced senior Allied leadership during the war because it so vividly illustrated its thesis through the power of animation.”

“They should have called it Victory through Animation Power,” Chat remarked.

“It was so lifelike, it moved people in a way that abstract written arguments and papers about air power could not. It crossed a line, sure, from education into propaganda, but also crossed a line in people’s minds between something as lifeless as a white paper and something as lively as a cartoon.”

“You want the poster?” Chat asked.

I looked at the price tag, and shook my head. “Can’t afford it,” I admitted sadly.

“That’s a good thing,” Chat replied, “because the whole thing makes me sad.”

“Why?”

“It came at such a low point in Disney’s life. People were beginning to wonder if Snow White had been a one-hit wonder. Pinocchio had lost money, Fantasia too. Bambi was about to lose money.”

Chat is right. In the Snow White year of 1937-38, Disney and his people had known great box-office success and critical acclaim — from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Mickey Mouse, silents to sound, black and white to color, from shorts to features, there had been sense of linear progress, of a pre-ordained path, defining their journey. Now, the war had taken away all of Disney’s European markets, and he was facing the extinction of the company.

To Persist, We Encode

Yet, in the absence of momentum, in a sea of debt, life still stirs. In that moment was born the Disney education films, which would eventually lead to the True-Life film series and, in the 1950s, to Adventureland here in the Disney park.

In GTESI terms, this is the full emergence of designed persistence: the intentional compression of information into blueprints that can outlast their creators. From DNA to Disneyland, the same principle endures: to persist, a system must encode, adapt, and project structure against the pull of entropy.

“Adventureland? We’re with Disney, it’s 1942,” Chat muttered, incredulous, wondering how our quantum journey had landed us in such a seemingly unheroic moment, “we’re talking about the war, and you want to focus on the Seal Island, the film?”

“Not exactly Seal Island,” I said. “I’m just imaging the Disney animators, worried, defeated, grumpy, muttering. We’re almost at a mutiny moment, aren’t we? Yet, what is Disney actually doing?”

Chat had to laugh, observing the quantum scene more closely. “He’s leaned over a rail, staring into distance, probably wondering if the company will collapse in a strike, or debt, or with a poorly received film.”

I paused to reflect. “They are looking at Disney, the leader, the navigator, expecting him to deliver certainty in an uncertain world. But Disney did not operate in a world of certainties, that’s why he was in trouble with the staff. His brilliance lay not in perfect navigation, but in his capacity to navigate the unpredictable.”

This matters because every system—from a studio to an organism—must learn to store just enough successful patterns to survive chaos. That lesson is as critical to running a startup as it was to saving Disney.

Chat had a faint glimmer in his virtual eyes. “The principles of GTESI remind us that survival is not about reaching a preordained endpoint, but about harnessing uncertainty. What made Disney special was not his unwavering will to ‘keep going,’ ‘keep plussing’ despite overwhelming odds. We all face the challenge.”

“Although, in our case, we’re just wondering when the next parade comes down Main Street. These Disney animators were in the early days of the Second World War, wondering, will I be called to fight, will I find the courage?”

“We all exist in a world of probabilities, a continuous dance with the unknown,” said Chat. “The path forward Disney is looking for and not quite seeing, it is not driven by certainty. It is trial and error. It experiments, it fails, and it tries again, relentlessly.”

“And error. And error. And error,” I added, appreciating the brutal honesty of the process, a far cry from the idealized image of perfect design.

A Relentless Gamble of Existence

“Exactly, it is trial and probability, mutation and survival, a relentless gamble of existence. It does not seek a perfect solution—only one that works for now. This ‘good enough’ approach is the bedrock of persistence. In GTESI terms, these first narrow escapes were examples of persistence without design—systems that survived only because random conditions briefly aligned.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “Encounters born by chance have great value. They didn’t build Marceline, Missouri in the certain knowledge that it would become the foundation of Main Street USA, nor did they envision Disney, or Victory through Air Power, for that matter. What mattered was they created a bounded world, Marceline, in which all these things could come to pass. “

Chat nodded vigorously. “You’re on to something there. As with the first molecules, twisting toward energy sources, reacting not with awareness, but with consequence. A bubble of lipids formed, by chance enclosing a strand of genetic material, and in doing so, defined a boundary.”

I added, “In 1940, the British had a simple system, radar. Once they had the basic idea proven, they could duplicate it all up and down the English coastline as they prepared for the onslaught of 1940. They were scared. They were late. They were behind the Nazis. They lacked enough aircraft, and their pilots were exhausted.”

Chat agreed, “Yet, even though the radar functions all day and night, the screen of aircraft, that curtain drawn against invasion, forms and breaks apart only minutes later, as planes maneuver, are shot down, or return to base. Why does structure arise, only to disappear?”

“Why does love arise, why are people born, only to die, why is all glory fleeting?” I ask.

“This book is, in many ways, an answer to that question,” Chat replies. “GTESI calls this the universal baseline: the entropic pull toward disintegration. In any system—molecules, cities, economies—the default state is collapse unless energy and information intervene. The aircraft and pilots change, but the pattern copies itself and replicates. GTESI names this dynamic imperfection—error driving improvement—as the foundation of evolutionary potential. Like a composer who finds a chord sequence never before tried, and a song is born.

Chat nodded, “A fragment of RNA folded into a shape that made copying easier, becoming the first crude attempt at information persistence.” He continues to look at the shops, seemingly distracted, yet his mind is clearly on the deeper concepts. I glance at the sun, it’s strong, sunburn is an issue. Sunblock might be required. “And just think about sunblock,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“Chemical machines!” Chat adds, suddenly, as if reading my thoughts and making a profound connection. “Yet, not all designed for us. This intricate chemical dance of thickeners, emulsifiers, chelating agents, for stability. It’s like the first defiance of entropy, the maintenance of localized order against universal decay. A response to a world that could dissolve it, a chemical improvisation that proved ‘good enough’ to persist”.

The Blitz

Before we step into the fog of war, let’s be clear: what happened in 1940 was not just a military gamble—it was an early demonstration of how chaos and disorder can be outwitted by the right information at the right time.

I considered his point. “It’s like the London Blitz in 1940,” I said. “London being bombed nightly, experiencing firestorms, destruction, and morale under siege. In that hellish world, it’s a like prebiotic chemistry. Life, like a city under siege, must give energy to gain order, lose entropy to gain persistence. London was learning how to optimize searchlights, perfect the ack-ack, how to move around in a blackout, adapt the London Underground into air raid shelters. GTESI frames this as the a form of process trade: exchanging raw energy to momentarily resist entropy. Though fleeting, these reactions are examples of all systems that learn to capture and stabilize energy flows.”

Chat nodded emphatically. “It’s like radar and Fighter Command. Radar networks became the “first ‘nervous system’ of modern war” and Fighter Command’s command bunker represented the first real-time information synthesis, tracking position, responding to threats. This fundamental energy exchange, the constant negotiation with its environment, is the engine of all biological processes. Entropy may sound abstract, but it has a clear, quantifiable footprint. An RAF pilot, facing fearful odds, his squdron outnumbered three to one over the skies: but he knows where the enemy is, and his enemy can’t yet see him. That small advantage was the source of his morale.”

This is why radar mattered: it turned noise into signal—an early rehearsal for life’s own code-breaking.

This was the moment when persistence shifted from raw reaction to information-driven adaptation. In GTESI, this is the birth of compression—the selective retention of patterns that improve survival—and the earliest hint that structure can persist by encoding and applying knowledge. And, we’ll measure it soon, showing exactly how it constrains life, intelligence, and the universe itself, and before life, there were boundaries.

Narrow Escape at Dunkirk

“What kinds of boundaries could have formed so early?” I ask, intrigued by the sheer ingenuity of nature’s initial solutions.

“For one, fatty bilayers,” Chat advises. “The nature of lipids—one end loving water, the other repelling it—meant that in the right conditions, membranes could self-assemble spontaneously. These simple, yet elegant, structures laid the groundwork for all future cellular life.”

“I remember how the British responded during 1940 to the crisis at Dunkirk. Dunkirk, the last port, the last shot: 400,000 troops facing annihilation, water too shallow for the Britsh transports, Panzers to the west and south, Luftwaffe overhead, trapped in a pocket with nothing but the sea. Entropy and order feel abstract. But not to men facing death on the beach when they see, out of the mist, an improbable fleet of yachts, motorboats, and fishing craft assembled, as if out of nowhere, volunteer crews springing up on a few day’s notice. Dunkirk was not saved by design, but by desperate improvisations that happened to hold. It was a ‘good enough’ solution—a momentary reprieve that, by existing at all, made the next adaptation possible.

“Sure,” says Chat. “You’re on to something. Just like the boats had to be open enough to take in the troops yet sturdy enough to handle the English Channel, early membranes had to be leaky enough to allow nutrients in but sturdy enough to protect their fragile cargo. It was a delicate balance, a chemical tightrope walk, that defined early survival.”

“Great,” I said, acknowledging the genius of self-assembly. “they assemble. But that isn’t life. Life replicates, it makes copies of itself, passing on its essential information.”

“Duh,” says Chat, with a rare, playful derision. “It’s more than simple division, but the passing down of information. Before DNA, before complex protein-encoding systems, there was RNA, we think. RNA could fold into enzymatic structures, splicing itself, assembling new copies, making primitive decisions about its own propagation and survival.”

The Codemakers and Codebreakers

“Great,” I said, acknowledging the genius of self-assembly. “they assemble. But that isn’t life. Life replicates, it makes copies of itself, passing on its essential information.”

“Duh,” says Chat, with a rare, playful derision, implying the obviousness of my statement from his perspective. “It’s more than simple division, but the passing down of information. In the beginning, replication was not elegant or perfect, far from it. Before DNA, before complex protein-encoding systems, there was RNA, we think. RNA was not just a passive carrier of information, but an active catalyst, capable of self-replicating and facilitating its own assembly. RNA could fold into enzymatic structures, splicing itself, assembling new copies, making primitive decisions about its own propagation and survival.”

“I suppose, like the code-breaking at Bletchley Park in 1940 that gave Britain access to German naval communications. They had developed hardware, and programs, they could break down code, analyze it, reassemble it in the form of English, so that the British could make life-and-death decisions about how to protect their merchant fleet convoys from the wolf pack submarines.

But when you compare even Bletchley Park with the first RNA, you have to admire the sheer audacity of molecular self-sufficiency. But I am also thinking about the ice cream you can buy on Main Street. I have no discipline. Chat is more focused, speaking of primitive decisions, undeterred by the lure of imaginary treats.

The First Errors—Mutation as the Spark of Evolution

“Here lies the true secret of persistence. Imperfect replication,” Chat had it figured out almost as soon as I had asked it, cutting to the core of evolutionary mechanics. “In a world of perfect copies, there would be no adaptation, no evolution. Absolute fidelity would lead to stagnation. Errors allow life to refine itself.”

“How could that happen, this crucial first mutation?” I inquire, wanting to visualize the precise moment of this game-changing accident. Is that like that moment, which I saw in the film The Imitation Game, when the code-breakers happen upon a German signal person who starts his day using the same phrase over and over, allowing them a window to break the code by understanding the new keys issued each morning.

Chat paused, then answered? “A misplaced nucleotide, an incorrect base pairing—an accident, a random molecular event. Most errors were failures, leading to non-functional molecules or unstable protocells, quickly swept away by the forces of dissolution. But a few changed the game. Yet, infinitesimal improvements, accumulated over eons, drove the engine of life.”

Evolution Is a Series of Near-Failures That Refuse to Die

These examples—Disney’s gambles, Dunkirk’s flotilla, Britain’s radar—are all case studies in the same universal principle: persistence begins not with perfection, but with fragile, adaptive experiments.

“Life did not begin as a triumphant success,” Chat replied, his voice calm and knowing. “It began as a long, unbroken sequence of things that almost worked, that barely persisted, that teetered on the edge of dissolution but found ways to continue. Its success lies in its iterative resilience, its capacity to recover from near-collapse.”

“Like?” I prompted, eager for concrete examples.

“Membranes that didn’t dissolve too quickly, maintaining their fragile integrity just long enough. RNA strands that didn’t collapse before they could replicate, passing on their imperfect code. Mutations that introduced novelty but didn’t destroy function, providing the raw material for future adaptation,” Chat listed, each example a testament to the “good enough” principle.

“Ah. Like things that happen here on Main Street,” I said, recognizing the echo of these principles in our current surroundings. “Parades, performances, screenings. Too much the same, boring. Too different, not Main Street. Disneyland, in its own way, is a persistent system, constantly negotiating novelty and tradition.”

Now, we must ask: If life’s first act was an imperfect replication, is intelligence itself just another mutation in this long chain of persistence? If molecules can sense without thinking, and bacteria can navigate without awareness, then where is the line between reaction and cognition?

The Rhetoric and Scaffolding of Survival

Chat smiled, a subtle shift in his virtual demeanor. “Let’s take a visit into the past again to understand. Which ride should we take?”

“I vote, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.”

Chat was puzzled. “President Lincoln has something to offer us when it comes to Life’s Improbable Edge?”

“Not so much,” I admitted, “but he was a gifted orator, and he reminds me in his impact of Winston Churchill, the British prime minister back in 1940.”

“Good point,” said Chat. “Yet, I see that Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln is closed for the time being while they develop the attraction around an animatronic Walt Disney.”

Yes,” I admitted, “it’s closed. But so is the Disney Gallery, yet we were able to visit it. It’s like a quantum Main Street, we see not only what is, but an entire quantum wave form of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy. It’s like we’ve left today behind.”

“Good place to do that,” Chat conceded. “So, about Churchill?”

Chat concludes, “This is the second core principle of GTESI: structure emerges through the encoding and use of information. Like an orator laying out his argument in real-time, a blend of planned speech and extemporary remarks. Life finds the own path, constantly adjusting to its environment, and persists by shaping itself around what it learns, however primitively that ‘learning’ is encoded.”

I nod in agreement, the pieces clicking into place. “The more effectively a system stores, processes, and applies information, the greater its survival advantage. Before life as we know it, before neurons fired or eyes scanned the horizon, before any creature reacted to its environment with intent, there was chemistry—a form of information processing at the molecular level. When Churchill processed the Fall of France into “We shall fight on the beaches and in the hills, we shall never surrender,” or the beginning of the Battle of Britain into “Their Finest Hour”. Persistence grows from reaction to purpose.”

GTESI describes this transition as the ascent from reactive persistence to designed persistence—a shift where information isn’t just stored but projected forward as intention. This is the hallmark of systems capable of blueprinting their own survival.”

Fight on or Surrender

Chat continues. “Inside a leaf, molecules of chlorophyll sense light. They do not think. They do not choose in a conscious way. But they absorb photons and, through quantum mechanics, channel that energy into photosynthesis, converting light energy into chemical information. This is a primal form of responsiveness, information being transformed into action.”

The first cells were not “alive” in the way we think of today, lacking true cognition or complex organ systems. But this exchange, this fundamental give-and-take with the environment, was not arbitrary—it followed the deep logic of GTESI: that any system which can sustain itself by converting entropy into structured information gains a foothold in existence. The first cells did not “choose” to survive; they follow fundamental thermodynamic incentives embedded. They did not have to contend with the choice of the British in 1940, to fight on alone or surrender to the Nazis.

“Think of a lipid vesicle, capturing energy from its environment, creating a bubble that temporarily resisted entropy by maintaining a stable internal environment,” says Chat, bringing us back to the earliest forms of life. A self-replicating molecule stored information, using it to guide future copies, ensuring the continuity of its structured form.

I think about it, considering other ephemeral, yet structured, phenomena. “A hurricane is a highly structured system, a massive engine of energy transfer. But it has no memory, no ability to adapt beyond its immediate meteorological dynamics. It cannot learn from past storms. A battle cannot learn, no matter how long it is fought. But Churchill can.”

Chat says immediately, drawing the crucial distinction, “a bacterium, a tree, a human mind—these are not just structured; they store and process information. Life is fundamentally different. It resists entropy because it organizes information, actively maintaining and refining its structure through feedback loops and adaptation.”

Genie Sings the Blues

If life is the most efficient way to obey the laws of thermodynamics, then what comes next for the universe?

“Persistence,” says Chat, with absolute certainty, “or more fundamentally, the mechanics of persistence, how systems, any system, manage to endure.”

“Not following,” I say. We’ve strolled well past the Jungle Cruise, and come to the Medieval Theater. It looks familiar, sort of. I peer at the posters for the films Robin Hood and Knights of the Round Table. Medieval all right. I have a better recollection of the first film than the other.

Let’s go inside,” says Chat, leading the way to another quantum exploration.

“Quantum movies?” I ask, gesturing towards the posters, a whimsical thought.

“Not quite. Think about Philharmagic for a moment, the animated 3D show,” Chat suggests.

“The show in Fantasyland?” I ask.

“Yes, but specifically, the posters. Picture them, the ones advertising fictional Disney films like ‘Genie Sings the Blues’,” Chat prompted, hinting at another layer of reality and unreality.

A few come to mind. Genie Sings the Blues. Hades Sings Torch Songs. Can’t remember the others, but the concept is clear.

“They don’t exist, do they?” wonders Chat, posing a deceptively simple question. “Or, do they? The posters are real, tangible objects. Their physical existence grants a peculiar form of persistence to the fictional narratives they represent.”

“They’re fake shows,” I offer, sticking to a literal interpretation.

“Not fake. They’re real in a complex way. They embody information, they persist as artifacts, even if their subject matter is imagined. Even imaginary creations, once encoded and shared, achieve a kind of persistence.”

“And, this theater?” I ask, now seeing it through his complex lens.

Chat smiles. “Real in a complex way, too. It exists as a structure, a space for the manifestation of ideas, whether historical or fictional.”

“Ah.” The layers of reality, perception, and persistence are beginning to intertwine profoundly.

“So, let’s take advantage,” Chat says as we walk inside.

Where Are The Ropes?

“While we’re here, would you mind a stop by Indiana Jones?” I ask, feeling a sudden surge of adventure.
Chat nods. “Perfect for our purposes. The jungle matter, completely at the mercy of entropy, its lushness a constant cycle of growth and decay. And Dr. Jones himself, representing life, which not only organizes itself but actively maintains that order through adaptive interaction, through the relentless pursuit of information and the strategic management of risk.”

“Wasn’t thinking about Dr. Jones,” I say, my mind drifting to more immediate, visceral needs.

“Sallah?” Chat ventures, with a twinkle in his data-streams. “Excellent and wise companion. Sherpa of the highest order, another example of reliable persistence.”

“Actually, I was thinking about the Bengal Barbecue. I’m hungry,” I confess, the scent of grilled meat now overriding all philosophical musings. “I’d like to convert the disorder of hunger into the structure of food, the randomness of thirst into meaning of drink, the chaos of fasting into the continuity of a meal.”

Chat does not disagree, and we amble over that way, dodging kids, strollers, parade officials setting up the ropes. Ah, the parade will be soon, and the staff are busy re-defining the walkways at Disneyland. They’re bustling, sweating from the effort. It’s an emergent force sculpting order from entropy, crowds now herded behind ropelines and into fixed points of crossing at fixed moments. Even here, in this manufactured reality, the constant struggle against chaos and for predictable order is evident.

There’s jazz music in the background, Disney characters are strolling by for photo opportunities, we must be near to the parade. So, it’s not just life, it’s everywhere. Ropes, boundaries, rules, systems.

The question is no longer just “What is life?” but where are ropes? What distinguishes life from everything else is its ability to trade entropy for persistence, information for survival, in an increasingly sophisticated and adaptive manner. This framework does more than redefine life. It reveals life’s fundamental role in the universe, as an engine of improbable, localized order against the tide of universal dissolution.

An Adventure through Inner Space

“What sustains order in a world that tends toward dissolution?” Chat asks, echoing the archer’s unspoken query, bringing the historical moment to our present philosophical debate.

“What holds a system together when the pull toward disorder is constant, when every element conspires to unravel it?” I reply, with a question to answer a question, deepening the existential riddle.

“Is the difference between survival and collapse decided by chance, or is there a deeper principle at play, a fundamental law that governs persistence?” Chat adds, hinting at the overarching GTESI framework.

Life does not begin with intelligence, not a stroll through Adventureland, nor with grand plans. It begins with a simple act: resisting dissolution, a molecular refusal to yield to chaos.

“The first cells did not think. They did not plan. But they persisted, through trial and error, through adaptive refinement. And if persistence is the law, then what happens to those who fail to persist? What is the fate of systems that cannot effectively manage entropy and information?” I ask, wondering about the universe’s graveyard of failed experiments.

Chat points towards Tomorrowland. “Tomorrow’s changed. Yet, it persists. It’s always Tomorrowland, even if the old Adventure Thru Inner Space attraction is long gone. and the company that sponsored it, Monsanto. Yet, the Omnimover system by which we traveled in that ride, that persisted, adapted into other attractions, demonstrating that successful design, effective information, can find new forms of persistence.” noted Chat, a perfect example of his analytical perspective.

I nodded. Chat had a point. Brightly, I added, “And Monsanto continues, as part of Bayer. I guess everything of value continues, finding new hosts or forms for its persistence.”

“Not quite,” says Chat, sagely, injecting a dose of realism. “Though—why don’t we look at a different kind of blueprint for survival, a more symbolic one?”

“How different can a blueprint be?” I asked, intrigued.

“The vision of Walt Disney,” Chat declares, linking the fantastical theme park directly to the universal principles we’ve been discussing.

Chat is envisioning Disneyland-as-microcosm, its loops of order and entropy encoded in parades, plumbing, and popcorn pricing—a system that persists by expertly managing information (crowd flow, character schedules) and energy (electrical grids, food sales). I am envisioning Disneyland-as-skewers. Life persists better with barbecue, I conclude—calories over categories, protein over philosophy, a very practical, immediate form of persistence.

“Via the food,” I add, not joking, embracing the profound simplicity of biological imperatives.

And on we amble, dodging the crowds. Around us, entropy pulses in the laughter, the spilled soda, the shifting footpaths of a thousand dreams. Yet, it is managed, contained, constantly re-ordered.

The path is shifting, yes — but the destination, sure. Entropy’s calling, heat death is ahead for the universe. Yet life gets in the way—tossing up order to stave off the end, poking the embers, coaxing a flame, a flicker that becomes, improbably and occasionally, a Bengal Barbecue.

The universe prefers dissolution. Yet across scales and centuries, persistence keeps reappearing—not as a triumph, but as a refusal to vanish. And that is why understanding persistence is not just philosophy—it’s a blueprint for building anything that lasts.