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The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life (2020)

57 points by Petiver 6y ago

lalaithion 6y ago
Sad to see no mention of the fact that we have built computers in Game of Life, including one that can play tetris: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...
- leephillips 6y ago
  The video at the top of the article seems to be a depiction of a computer made in Life that encodes Life. Melanie Mitchell’s comment, early in the article, mentions that fact that you are sad to see no mention of.
- seph-reed 6y ago
  There is one mention of it in one of the quotes. > Melanie Mitchell — Professor of complexity, Santa Fe Institute Given that Conway’s proof that the Game of Life can be made to simulate a Universal Computer — that is, it could be “programmed” to carry out any computation that a traditional computer can do — the extremely simple rules can give rise to the most complex and most unpredictable behavior possible
news_to_me 6y ago
Satisfying to see Kjetil Golid’s work mentioned — one of my favorite artists! https://www.katevassgalerie.com/kjetil-golid https://www.katevassgalerie.com/kjetil-golid
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Yes, great stuff - his own site has some works you can tinker with, too[1], along with links to the source[2]. 1: https://generated.space/sketch/ornament/ https://generated.space/sketch/ornament/ 2: https://github.com/kgolid/ornament https://github.com/kgolid/ornament
  - motohagiography 6y ago
    Thank you for linking this, super cool. His piece on Byrne's Euclid is amazing: https://generated.space/sketch/byrne-proofs/ https://generated.space/sketch/byrne-proofs/
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/88J9w https://archive.is/88J9w
seph-reed 6y ago
Fun debate: Does "Conways Game of Life" constitute a universe? If so, do those forms within it have life?
- OscarCunningham 6y ago
  It's hard to make structures in CGoL that are robust to collisions. So if you randomly initialised the universe I suspect you would never get life, because any complex structure that did arise would crash into random junk and be destroyed as soon as it tried to move.
  - undreren 6y ago
    If all nodes had a 1:1,000,000,000 chance to randomly flip every tick, then resilient structures would probably arise eventually, given a very large (or infinite) board.

57 points by Petiver 6y ago

Sad to see no mention of the fact that we have built computers in Game of Life, including one that can play tetris: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...

leephillips 6y ago
The video at the top of the article seems to be a depiction of a computer made in Life that encodes Life. Melanie Mitchell’s comment, early in the article, mentions that fact that you are sad to see no mention of.
seph-reed 6y ago
There is one mention of it in one of the quotes. > Melanie Mitchell — Professor of complexity, Santa Fe Institute Given that Conway’s proof that the Game of Life can be made to simulate a Universal Computer — that is, it could be “programmed” to carry out any computation that a traditional computer can do — the extremely simple rules can give rise to the most complex and most unpredictable behavior possible

news_to_me 6y ago

Satisfying to see Kjetil Golid’s work mentioned — one of my favorite artists! https://www.katevassgalerie.com/kjetil-golid https://www.katevassgalerie.com/kjetil-golid

blacksmith_tb 6y ago
Yes, great stuff - his own site has some works you can tinker with, too[1], along with links to the source[2]. 1: https://generated.space/sketch/ornament/ https://generated.space/sketch/ornament/ 2: https://github.com/kgolid/ornament https://github.com/kgolid/ornament
- motohagiography 6y ago
  Thank you for linking this, super cool. His piece on Byrne's Euclid is amazing: https://generated.space/sketch/byrne-proofs/ https://generated.space/sketch/byrne-proofs/

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/88J9w https://archive.is/88J9w

seph-reed 6y ago

Fun debate: Does "Conways Game of Life" constitute a universe? If so, do those forms within it have life?

OscarCunningham 6y ago
It's hard to make structures in CGoL that are robust to collisions. So if you randomly initialised the universe I suspect you would never get life, because any complex structure that did arise would crash into random junk and be destroyed as soon as it tried to move.
- undreren 6y ago
  If all nodes had a 1:1,000,000,000 chance to randomly flip every tick, then resilient structures would probably arise eventually, given a very large (or infinite) board.