Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...

On a more serious note, I was surprised the author completely neglects a biological definition of alive. I've never seen a definition of alive that neglects the ability to replicate. This article focuses on complexity, but there are many systems that are very complex but would not fit a definition of alive. Chemical reactions with many thousands of intermediate reagents, for example.

I'd also like to compare to a simpler organism: Are viruses alive?