This is a simple bottle universe. What hope do we have to make sense of our own universe if we can't solve this simple case. In the video, Derek shows that yo

This is a simple bottle universe. What hope do we have to make sense of our own universe if we can't solve this simple case. In the video, Derek shows that you can see the problem as a turing machine. But if you view it as operation on strings in basis 6, you observe that the carry doesn't propagate which means that you can compute using a 1d cellular automaton (with local rules). https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CollatzProblemAsACellularAutomaton/ https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CollatzProblemAsACellular... This way of viewing the Collatz conjecture as a cellular automaton mean that the Collatz conjecture is like a simpler version of Conway's game of life. You can then use some memoization tricks like hashlife to compute it more efficiently. In the game of life, some interesting patterns emerge, whereas in Collatz it is conjectured that they all end in the same pattern of desolation. Are the Collatz cells doomed ? Is the Collatz automaton turing-complete ? Can life emerge in the Collatz universe ? Would this change anything for these small little cells ?