Are living organisms actually patterns of information that persist through an ongoing exchange of matter-energy?
Yes they are patterns of information. The entire physical universe is actually a web of information in the lowest dimension of conscious thought that has been compressed with gravity to produce all the things that can be experienced through the senses of sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell, feeling and emotions and all the levels of understanding including rational, logical, analytical, psychological, mathematical and scientific. But the living information is not living due to an ongoing exchange of energy matter, it lives because it cannot die. Only the physical material can die. When the matter component expires, the energy and information are released from the matter form. All information is eternal and infinite. It cannot be destroyed, simply because it is all contained in a conscious universe. Each strand of information represents one strand of a giant web of information that is the foundation for all of physical life. The web is an actual information matrix; a consc...