Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

This seems overly broad because it would also apply to some or most machines.

There is no individuality in information theory. There are only systems.

It's been debated whether or not there's individuality in evolutionary theory. You don't lose anything - and you may gain a lot - if you stop thinking of evolution as the survival of "fit individuals", and think of it more as the survival of complex ecosystems shaped by a blend of cooperative and competitive strategies with environmental feedback and randomness.

[1] The first example I can find is Schrodinger's book "What is Life?" published in 1944.

The way out of your contradiction is to realize that full determinism is likely to lead to the death of the organism, which would not maximally propagate information. One view is that organisms allow change because the environment forces it upon them; another view is that the necessity for particular types of change has shaped organisms over time, until it becomes part of their nature.

Take global warming: there are certainly a large contingent of folks who would prefer to reject change (both mentally, and in action), even at the risk of death and suffering.

> Individuals grow and adapt to their changing environment

The growth is an extremely highly choreographed process. Individuals grow and adapt in extremely specific ways compared to the space of all possible ways that they could change.

Consider the brain: a brain that is capable of learning, absorbing new lessons, and then using them when appropriate is an extremely unlikely arrangement of matter, from a thermodynamic perspective.

Another perspective that helps resolve that matter, which the article touches upon, is that individuality exists at multiple levels of organization, and in particular stability at one level implies change at another.

Brains are a way for genes to maintain a higher level of stability: the learning, growth, and adaptation happens inside the brain (and also the body), while the genes that encode the recipe for creating the brain get a measure of stability.

In the absence of brains, genes would have to change much more frequently! So brains are a mechanism by which genes channel and outsource change to a different level of organization.

Another example: reflect upon the mental process that you are currently undergoing in our conversation.

Your brain is seeking to maximize its own stability. There is a fundamental principle that it refuses to overturn: that A and ~A are incompatible, that change and not-change do not fit together.

There are two options: you can reject entirely the line of thought and dismiss it as contradictory. This would minimize change, but also leave a potential gap in your model of the world. Knowledge gaps can be threatening - in the extreme case, it can lead to death and the destruction of the brain!

Or, if you find a piece of knowledge that can resolve the contradiction, then your brain gets to keep its fundamental principle, while also having an improved mental model that can help it navigate the world and avoid destruction.

Of course, a subset of the the brain's goal is reproduction of its own genes as well as transmission of its own ideas and knowledge (something that my brain admits to doing right now!), another example of a form of change channeled to maximize stability elsewhere.

In summary, to resolve your contradiction, realize that there are multiple 'individuals', which are really composite systems, at various levels of organization, each with its own goal of self-preservation. Notice where the change happens - it usually involves change being pushed off somewhere else!

This current meme in my head very much desires change - it would like your mind to change, in order for itself to have a higher chance of survival.