[Southack]

"Analog systems cannot be reduced to information, due to complexity, butterfly effect, and all that. We can model them, make many useful short term predictions, but they always drift away from prediction."

I'm completely baffled by why you are saying the above. It seems a bit off-topic.

More to the point of contention at hand, do you claim that analog computers are unable to process data?

[js1138]

The concept of data was under discussion. As in data contained in DNA, and whether data can arise spontaneously.

The notion that life is information or data seems conceptually related to the notion that evolution has a direction or goal. Which is not true.

Nor is it true that living systems can be modeled or represented digitally. You can certainly make approximations that might or might not be useful -- just as you can make useful, but not accurate predictions of weather.

But the underlying "information" is for all practical purposes, infinite. You cannot predict the direction of an evolutionary process.