[tortoise]

As for the 'algorithm at the beginning', one can't rule it out, but one also can't rule out that there was no algorithm but rather what we see is the unfolding of a cascade of causation from a rather simple beginning.

In a strict mathematical sense, there is no distinction here. Even in less strict terms, an 'algorithm' is nothing more than the name for a high-order representation of information, and therefore all information is an algorithm (and everything is information, mathematically). In this sense, there is nothing special about 'algorithms', at the "beginning" or elsewhere; if something exists at all it must be an algorithm.

The idea that data, information, patterns, computers, and algorithms are fundamentally different concepts is an intuitive but perniciously incorrect bit of common sense. It is one of the reasons information theory is so difficult to grok -- its fundamental theorems violate what most people "know".

[snarks_when_bored]

I was emphasizing the possibility that what we see is a self-unfolding process (an algorithm in process of writing itself, as it were), wishing to set that over against the idea that there was a pre-existing program that was then 'run'. I'm not sure that's a distinction without a difference (although it could be).

In fact, I tend to the view that all information is embodied information, that there was never, is not now nor will there ever be any information that is not physically carried or mediated. This is what I call the Roseanne Roseanna Danna theory of reality: "There's always something...if it's not one thing, it's another."