7 ms·

This is fascinating. It's like a more complex game of life than John connoway's. It's crazy that little creatures seem to form at such small scales easily with

This is fascinating. It's like a more complex game of life than John connoway's. It's crazy that little creatures seem to form at such small scales easily with these parameters. It's almost like the parameters of our real universe intentionally made it difficult to form life, rather than easy as some people seem to think.

at_a_remove 3y ago
They are less creatures than molecules. Now, mind you, as some complex sets of rules approach steady state I can pretend they are far-flung stellar empires with colors ascribed to each type of system of government (and have). What is fooling you is the motion. This is sustained because the system has no conservation principles built in. You can make A-B pairs where B is attracted to A, A is repelled by B, and off they go, zoom. Were the meta-rules devised such that conservation of energy or momentum and such were baked in to whatever system you devised, you would see less exciting structures which would more resemble a late-stage pentamino explosion in the Game of Life. With a sufficiently large processor, I would like to see this in three dimensions and more options for force, such as dropping off as the inverse of r or r-cubed or even r * log(r), or some "repulsive at a distance, attractive at very close quarters" particles. I have a feeling that such a system would grind to a halt even with clever optimizations.
- billytetrud 3y ago
  Ah that's interesting, I can see how that would result in a lot more dynamic behavior.
- dustingetz 3y ago
  need analog computer for that :)
- noduerme 3y ago
  This already does look like it has falloff... mutual attractors clearly seem more attracted to nearby particles than to larger groups further away.
  - wetmore 3y ago
    I assume it falls off at inverse of r squared, which is why the person you're replying to is mentioning other functions besides that one.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      I read them differently. >> I have a feeling that such a system would grind to a halt even with clever optimizations. I took this to mean that they thought there was no falloff calculated at all. If there is, I don't see why substituting a different function, e.g. cube vs square, would be significantly more CPU-intensive.
      - at_a_remove 3y ago
        You focused on just one clause. Consider the whole: 1) Three dimensions, not two. Therefore distance is not the square root of (delta-x * delta-x + delta-y * delta-y) but the cube root of (delta-x * delta-x + delta-y * delta-y + delta-z * delta-z). More operations. 2) Three dimensions, not two. As you start increasing the number of dimensions, the simulation feels more and more empty. One hundred particles on a line a thousand units long is crowded. One hundred particles on a grid of one thousand by one thousand feels like more "room" for that same number of particles. In a volume of a thousand by a thousand by a thousand, one hundred particles feels too few, and one would naturally increase the number of particles. Naively, which is to say without optimizations, the number of force computed grow as N-squared. More operations. 3) Cube falloff goes by r * r * r, rather than r * r. More operations, by fifty percent. And I did suggest some more exotic functions in there which certainly could be more daunting.
        mattashii 3y ago
        > 1) Three dimensions, not two. Therefore distance is not the square root of (...) but the cube root of (...). No, it is still a square root. The term under the root is correct, but distance in N dimensions (assuming euclidian space) is just sqrt(sum(delta-n ^ 2))
- itishappy 3y ago
  > I would like to see this in three dimensions... Oh, there's one of those too! I don't see ways to change the falloff though, just the magnitude... https://hunar4321.github.io/particle-life/particle_life_3d.html https://hunar4321.github.io/particle-life/particle_life_3d.h...
squigz 3y ago
There's no reason to believe life is particularly rare in the universe either, though.
- billytetrud 3y ago
  There are, in fact, reasons to believe that. Nothing definitive of course. But the fact that we haven't been absorbed by a von neumann swarm or something like it places strict limits on the prevalence of life and/or what stages that life can achieve. One would either have to belive that intelligent life is vastly less likely than non-intelligent life, or that life itself is quite rare, or that life simply hasn't been around for much longer than life on earth.
  - squigz 3y ago
    I don't see not being eaten by a swarm of machines as evidence of anything - but it is interesting to me that you'd qualify all this with "or what stages that life can achieve". So simple life could be extraordinarily commonplace, and considering the context of this post...
    - billytetrud 3y ago
      It is a fact that we haven't been eaten by a swarm of anything. Facts are evidence. If you don't understand that, I don't think we'll be having a productive or fun converstion. Sound more like you're interested in making innane snarky comments to fuel your own ego. Good luck with that.
      - squigz 3y ago
        Would you like to actually address the point I made about simple life?
        billytetrud 3y ago
        If you made a point about that, it was not clear to me. Perhaps you were implying that simple life could be very common even if intelligent life isn't. While yes, that is a possibility, that says nothing of its probability. Were that the circumstance, it leaves the question open as to why simple life would be common but intelligent life not common.

at_a_remove 3y ago

They are less creatures than molecules. Now, mind you, as some complex sets of rules approach steady state I can pretend they are far-flung stellar empires with colors ascribed to each type of system of government (and have). What is fooling you is the motion. This is sustained because the system has no conservation principles built in. You can make A-B pairs where B is attracted to A, A is repelled by B, and off they go, zoom. Were the meta-rules devised such that conservation of energy or momentum and such were baked in to whatever system you devised, you would see less exciting structures which would more resemble a late-stage pentamino explosion in the Game of Life. With a sufficiently large processor, I would like to see this in three dimensions and more options for force, such as dropping off as the inverse of r or r-cubed or even r * log(r), or some "repulsive at a distance, attractive at very close quarters" particles. I have a feeling that such a system would grind to a halt even with clever optimizations.

billytetrud 3y ago
Ah that's interesting, I can see how that would result in a lot more dynamic behavior.
dustingetz 3y ago
need analog computer for that :)
noduerme 3y ago
This already does look like it has falloff... mutual attractors clearly seem more attracted to nearby particles than to larger groups further away.
- wetmore 3y ago
  I assume it falls off at inverse of r squared, which is why the person you're replying to is mentioning other functions besides that one.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    I read them differently. >> I have a feeling that such a system would grind to a halt even with clever optimizations. I took this to mean that they thought there was no falloff calculated at all. If there is, I don't see why substituting a different function, e.g. cube vs square, would be significantly more CPU-intensive.
    - at_a_remove 3y ago
      You focused on just one clause. Consider the whole: 1) Three dimensions, not two. Therefore distance is not the square root of (delta-x * delta-x + delta-y * delta-y) but the cube root of (delta-x * delta-x + delta-y * delta-y + delta-z * delta-z). More operations. 2) Three dimensions, not two. As you start increasing the number of dimensions, the simulation feels more and more empty. One hundred particles on a line a thousand units long is crowded. One hundred particles on a grid of one thousand by one thousand feels like more "room" for that same number of particles. In a volume of a thousand by a thousand by a thousand, one hundred particles feels too few, and one would naturally increase the number of particles. Naively, which is to say without optimizations, the number of force computed grow as N-squared. More operations. 3) Cube falloff goes by r * r * r, rather than r * r. More operations, by fifty percent. And I did suggest some more exotic functions in there which certainly could be more daunting.
      - mattashii 3y ago
        > 1) Three dimensions, not two. Therefore distance is not the square root of (...) but the cube root of (...). No, it is still a square root. The term under the root is correct, but distance in N dimensions (assuming euclidian space) is just sqrt(sum(delta-n ^ 2))
itishappy 3y ago
> I would like to see this in three dimensions... Oh, there's one of those too! I don't see ways to change the falloff though, just the magnitude... https://hunar4321.github.io/particle-life/particle_life_3d.html https://hunar4321.github.io/particle-life/particle_life_3d.h...

squigz 3y ago

There's no reason to believe life is particularly rare in the universe either, though.

billytetrud 3y ago
There are, in fact, reasons to believe that. Nothing definitive of course. But the fact that we haven't been absorbed by a von neumann swarm or something like it places strict limits on the prevalence of life and/or what stages that life can achieve. One would either have to belive that intelligent life is vastly less likely than non-intelligent life, or that life itself is quite rare, or that life simply hasn't been around for much longer than life on earth.
- squigz 3y ago
  I don't see not being eaten by a swarm of machines as evidence of anything - but it is interesting to me that you'd qualify all this with "or what stages that life can achieve". So simple life could be extraordinarily commonplace, and considering the context of this post...
  - billytetrud 3y ago
    It is a fact that we haven't been eaten by a swarm of anything. Facts are evidence. If you don't understand that, I don't think we'll be having a productive or fun converstion. Sound more like you're interested in making innane snarky comments to fuel your own ego. Good luck with that.
    - squigz 3y ago
      Would you like to actually address the point I made about simple life?
      - billytetrud 3y ago
        If you made a point about that, it was not clear to me. Perhaps you were implying that simple life could be very common even if intelligent life isn't. While yes, that is a possibility, that says nothing of its probability. Were that the circumstance, it leaves the question open as to why simple life would be common but intelligent life not common.