4 ms·

This isn't meant as some cheeky passive aggressive thing, but a genuine curiosity from someone who has always been really fascinated by CGOL and cellular automa

This isn't meant as some cheeky passive aggressive thing, but a genuine curiosity from someone who has always been really fascinated by CGOL and cellular automata in general: has there been any practical uses of cellular automata outside of hobbyist mathematics? I read Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", and it certainly feels like there's a lot of value to be gleaned from Cellular Automata, but thus far I haven't seen anything terribly useful. I'm happy enough for it to just be a fun mathematics game, but it would be nice to be able to explain something useful coming from me spending hours and hours hacking together different Langton rules.

zem 3y ago
check out the "sandpile model", which was very influential in the study of critical phenomena in physics. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-sandpile-model-The-classical-thought-experiment-motivating-self-organized_fig2_266626997 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-sandpile-model-The-c...
sumtechguy 3y ago
That branch of cellular automata was the precursors for what we call AL/ML today. If I remember correctly Conways version was a simplified version from Von Neumanns version. Where they used hard rules to affect the neighbors the weighting systems and functions we use now was an offshoot of that. They could even become interesting again if ML were to use those kind of rules to kill off/grow nodes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cevi 3y ago
I once used the hashlife algorithm to analyze the win/loss pattern of a game which I couldn't find any other way to analyze directly [1]. Of course, this is an application of cellular automata to a different sort of hobbyist mathematics, rather than a truly practical use... [1] https://mathoverflow.net/questions/85314/can-anyone-analyze-this-misere-game https://mathoverflow.net/questions/85314/can-anyone-analyze-...

zem 3y ago

check out the "sandpile model", which was very influential in the study of critical phenomena in physics. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-sandpile-model-The-classical-thought-experiment-motivating-self-organized_fig2_266626997 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-sandpile-model-The-c...

sumtechguy 3y ago

That branch of cellular automata was the precursors for what we call AL/ML today. If I remember correctly Conways version was a simplified version from Von Neumanns version. Where they used hard rules to affect the neighbors the weighting systems and functions we use now was an offshoot of that. They could even become interesting again if ML were to use those kind of rules to kill off/grow nodes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cevi 3y ago

I once used the hashlife algorithm to analyze the win/loss pattern of a game which I couldn't find any other way to analyze directly [1]. Of course, this is an application of cellular automata to a different sort of hobbyist mathematics, rather than a truly practical use... [1] https://mathoverflow.net/questions/85314/can-anyone-analyze-this-misere-game https://mathoverflow.net/questions/85314/can-anyone-analyze-...