Information and significance are not the same thing.
Information describes differences, signals, or patterns that can be detected, transmitted, stored, and transformed. Information-processing systems can respond to such differences without those differences having any significance for the system itself.
Living systems differ because they do not merely process information. They evaluate information according to its consequences for viability, functioning, and adaptive persistence.
A thermometer detects temperature changes, but the information has no significance for the thermometer. A living organism, by contrast, evaluates temperature changes according to whether they support or threaten continued functioning.
Information explains how signals are processed.
Biological evaluation explains why those signals matter.
From an APS perspective, evaluation transforms information into biological significance, providing the foundation from which meaning, cognition, and behaviour emerge.