And the contents of the information being copied is basically a recepie for building a machine that can make copies of the information needed to build that machine...

It's so weird thinking about how we're just copying DNA.

What's more interesting to me is that we're not just copying it. We're taking two strands of DNA and randomly choosing some from each strand. Some animals are clones of their parent, but most are a randomized mix from each parent. The strands are 99% the same, so to a certain extent it's just copying that molecule, but it's also trying to perfect that remaining 1%.

Instead of being a way to copy a molecule forever, it's a way to optimize that molecule. But, what is an optimal molecule? It's a molecule that contains instructions to generate a creature that has 2 legs, 2 hands, a brain, etc.