Having attended a British public school in the 70s & early 80s I can say that this is most definitely true.

No

My understanding is that evolutionary processes are central to the immune system & the ‘memory’ of T-cells is part of that, not anything connected to what we would call memory or consciousness. As for mutations, they can range from simple copying errors to cosmic ray impacts.

That may be your belief but there’s no evidence for it.

Survival triggered the adaptation. Those mutations that improved survival lived to reproduce more in the same way that darker moths did better in sooty towns. Not sure what you mean by cellular memory - DNA?

The GOE was not a moment if tine but took place over maybe 400 million years, plenty of time for gradual evolutionary change.

Thanks! Would these be needed in a low O environment at all, since it seems they’re triggered by O deactivation of nitrogenase? Is this in fact a late adaptation post great oxygenation event?

Don't you mean Oxygen in the environment, not nitrogen? There was plenty of N2 around from the start. Adaptation through darwinian evolution - mutation+selection - is perfectly capable of these changes without any need for a consciousness.

I don't see any evidence for that. And if there were such a consciousness, why the long delay from the first single cell organisms, maybe 4Gyr ago, to the first multicellular, just 500 Myr ago? About 7/8ths of the time there has been life on Earth it's been single celled.

I’ve not followed those aspects of this result that well, apart from a generic concern about all results coming from ‘AI’ analysis. More generally, various life building blocks have been found in space already so a few more isn’t a huge surprise. Chemistry is everywhere. No special event needed.

We already know of stromatolites 3.5 billion years old Earth, and there are arguments for life being around even earlier. Stromatolites are made by layers of cyanobacteria which photosynthesise. Apart from using 'AI', I don't see this report is saying much new. sciencenotes.org/stromatolite...

There is always time for cherry pie.