…I don’t see anything wrong with the “user as definer” paradigm. It even seems very egalitarian to me. Despite negative connotations of the broader usage of “user”. “Using” is probably one of the basic defining concepts of intelligence—notice how tool usage is not simply limited to the human species, but it definitely gave us a competitive advantage, and it is probably a hallmark of most successful (in a biological sense) species (that is, complex species.)

Maybe, more precisely, [the advantageous aspect of tool usage is determined by] energy considerations of efficiency: energy expended vs. energy attained ([and also considering] entropy lost and structure increasing in order.)

I imagine [that] bacteria, while biologically successful, i.e., prolific—do not achieve this through high efficiency.