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So, do you think this was a twinkle in the back of Conways mind when he was scheming and coming up with the game?

• samatman 3y ago
  Probably not! I draw your attention to a paragraph from Gardner's column which introduced the Game of Life: > Conway conjectures that no pattern can grow without limit. Put another way, any configuration with a finite number of counters cannot grow beyond a finite upper limit to the number of counters on the field. This is probably the deepest and most difficult question posed by the game. Conway has offered a prize of $50 to the first person who can prove or disprove the conjecture before the end of the year. One way to disprove it would be to discover patterns that keep adding counters to the field: a "gun" (a configuration that repeatedly shoots out moving objects such as the "glider," to be explained below) or a "puffer train" (a configuration that moves but leaves behind a trail of "smoke"). I shall forward all proofs to Conway, who will act as the final arbiter of the contest. https://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/october1970.html https://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/october1970.html A related question is whether, after Bill Gosper won that conjecture a month later with the Gosper Glider Gun, did Conway then suspect that Life could be simulated in Life. I haven't been able to dig up a definitive answer but I suspect it's "yes".