Hi George,
Your essay is really interesting. I have never heard that chess programs have anything to do with entropy! So inspired by you I have started to read more and have found a lot of fascinating stuff.
Especially important from my point of view is a connection between entropy and self-organized criticality that in turn is connected with emergence and evolution in physics.
According to Lee Smolin (Loop Quantum Gravity) self-organized critical systems are statistical systems that naturally evolve without fine tuning to critical states in which correlation functions are scale invariant. My own view seems to support the view of Smolin in the meaning that the universe is a dissipative coupled system that exhibits self-organized criticality. http://vixra.org/abs/1102.0026
I am glad that you see the connection between statistical physics and evolutionary biology. In my letter (vixra) I have applied the theory of Darwinism far beyond its original sphere of organic evolution on Earth.
Your essay conclusion is ...that information and matter are two sides of the same thing in physics, because the matter is the diffraction pattern of the electromagnetic waves. I would say that the matter is the wave itself but I do not make the same mistake as Schroedinger... My essay explains it very shortly giving directions to references. Maybe you would try to read and comment?
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1609
I should not comment or rate your essay yet because this area is too fresh for me. I have to study the subject.
But thank once more for the inspiration.
Philip gave you a link and I have found very fresh one (rather popular science)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/04/21/from-atoms-to-bits-physics-shows-entropy-as-the-root-of-intelligence/