> controlled largely by deterministic chemicals

I wonder if that's a typo, but there's no determinism all the way up from position of an electron in the core, and thru protein binding, which is also non-deterministic. That's why they run that COVID Folding@Home stuff - to assess how well vaccine particles can bind to a virus thru variations - lone "hit" or "non-hit" don't matter much.

That non-determinism alone is a great source of suffering, even before we get to "embodiment" and "need to feed that embodiment". ;-)