Darwinizing the Universe: A Theory That Explains Everything Explains Nothing

Not helpful. This isn't a new idea, Dawkins and Dennett have had a similar idea for years, but a key issue "selfish replicators" isn't addressed

Bigger issues with Evolution as a theory of everything:

First, since ideas are also transmitted this way, and survive because of their fitness rather than truth it requires extreme skepticism (see the EAAN line of argumentation).

Second, this requires one to operate within an approach to science which follows Kuhn's approach, which opens large cans of worms.

Third, the techniques behind these ideas use too many substitutes for empirical data.

Fourth and finally this theory assumes Go's is Complex in His substance, which is a strawman since monotheism argues the opposite point, and the point is asserted rather than argued.

From the authors of the paper the Breakpoint references…

We propose that an additional, hitherto-unarticulated law is required to characterize familiar macroscopic phenomena of our complex, evolving universe. An important feature of the classical laws of physics is the conceptual equivalence of specific characteristics shared by an extensive, seemingly diverse body of natural phenomena.

I’m not read up enough on the topic to judge whether they’re correct, but the authors clearly think they are saying something different from Dawkins and Dennett. Seems likely that it’s a variation on what others have said. From a high altitude, it all just sounds like naturalism/methodological naturalism to me.

The point of the Breakpoint piece is that naturalism marches on, keeps trying harder to be adequate, and is still failing, as it must.

intelligent design advocate David Coppedge points out the flagrant personification happening here. Nature “prefers … functional configurations?” It does no such thing, because at least according to Naturalism it has no goal, nor any notion of “function.”

In reality, the attempt to “Darwinize the entire universe,” as Coppedge puts it, is little more than a roundabout way of admitting how well-designed the universe is, and trying to come up with a force that allowed it to design itself.

Edit to add: To me, it’s interesting that Wong, Cleveland, et al. seem to argue that the entities of the universe prefer existence to nonexistence. This seems way out of science and deep into philosophy, if you ask me. Why should the universe do that? (And, as the Coppedge noted, how could it possibly do that in a naturalistic framework?)

If there is some point which is distinct here, what is distinct isn't listed.

I agree with you that this is a problem, but a minor one in my opinion. By preferred they mean naturally selected, within the library of Babel (the discussion includes an element of Dennett's take on this point, which isn't acknowledged as his).

As to materialism, there are non-reductive materialists (particularly in philosophy of mind) and the continent had a number of scientific pantheists for an extended period of time. Dawkins and Dennett each introduced a return to reductive materialism in their own fields. Dawkins by focusing on genes as the central unit of evolution, with individual creatures becoming vehicles to genes (before the debate was selection individual or the herd). With Dennett it was in philosophy of science, trying to introduce Dawkins concept of the meme into philosophy of mind.