Nothing Succeeds Like Succession

Hi! Glad to meet you! I'm a particle of light. I have no sense of time! Roger Penrose now thinks that you'll be me, eventually. So don't worry!

Know what else? I can be entangled, so space is no big deal for me either. No spacing for me!

Meet my cousin, a matter wave. Einstein said that E = MC², so don't worry about succession. Energy is indestructible!

Hi! Glad to meet you! I'm a black hole singularity. No light escapes from me. There is no time. I have lots of brothers and sisters. So rest assured, Mr. Survival. There are plenty of things in the Universe that don't bow to the law of succession. No matter how groovy and non-linear it is.

If you think it's significant that matter “comes before life,” then you automatically think that “coming before” things is better than “coming after them.”

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that “before” and “after” mean that you believe in, erm, moments.

Let's just concentrate on the other part of the argument: reductionism. You believe that matter relates to life “asymmetrically,” in other words, life is reducible to matter. You believe that this is what Darwinism means.

If you like how life reduces to matter, you're gonna love how matter reduces to energy!

Wait a second—you don't? But why? Oh, because if that's the case, then nothing is really destroyed, which means that you have to change your name from Mr. Survival to Mr. Worried about an Epiphenomenon.