Why template-directed replication and not just autocatalysis? Both multiply molecules. Both consume free energy. Both can be selected for in dissipative environments. The question of why life chose one over the other has been treated as historical contingency — a frozen accident of early chemistry.
This framework derives the answer from statistical physics. Dissipation-driven selection — the preferential survival of states that absorb and dissipate environmental free energy — creates a bias between the two strategies that is doubly exponential.
The argument: template-directed replication copies information with fidelity ε. Each round of replication produces offspring that are themselves capable of template-directed replication with the same fidelity. The population grows exponentially, and the fidelity of the exponentially growing population is itself exponentially maintained. This is doubly exponential amplification — the information content of the population grows as exp(exp(t)).
Simple autocatalysis, by contrast, amplifies the number of molecules but not the information they carry. Each copy is independent — errors don't compound, but neither does fidelity. The amplification is singly exponential.
In a competitive environment where free energy is limited, the doubly exponential strategy dominates the singly exponential one above a threshold of replication fidelity and resource availability. Below the threshold, neither strategy is stable. Above it, template-directed replication wins not gradually but categorically — the exponential separation between the two growth rates means that any finite advantage in fidelity translates to total dominance over any finite time horizon.
Life's defining feature — template-directed replication rather than mere self-catalysis — becomes not a contingent invention but a thermodynamic inevitability. Given sufficient fidelity and free energy, the universe selects for it. The question shifts from “why did life choose replication?” to “what set the fidelity threshold?”