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Excuse my ignorance, but I didn't understand a word of what the article was about. Could you explain me?

by Novash 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
No problem, it's a pretty academic exercise what they're doing there but it is very interesting for lots of reasons. The game of life is a cellular automaton 'game' designed by John Conway, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life for lots more detail. Conways life has been proven to be 'Turning complete', which means that it can compute anything worth computing, even though due to practical limitations (time, memory) plenty of things that you could compute in theory in practice are not worth waiting for. The basis of the 'Turing Completeness' argument for the game of life revolves around the 'glider', a simple pattern that moves across the grid that the 'life' cells play out their existence on. These gliders can be set up and timed in such a way that you can form simple logic gates with them, and from these simple gates you can construct more complicated digital logic circuitry, like adders and so on. This in turn can lead to a life based universal computer, and it seems that these people have done just that. On top of that they seem to have a 'translator' that will produce the 'life' pattern you need to compute arbitrary calculations, which is the essence of a higher level language (the 'machine' language of life could be considered the initial state of the cells, to produce that you could set them all up by hand or you could have a computer program help you doing it). I hope that explains it accurately enough and I hope that if it is accurate that it is clear.
- Novash 17y ago
  Finished studying the theory. Now it kind of makes more sense, thanks. So, they created a translator to give you the initial state that would end up calculating what you need? Cool, but how can they create a universal calculator if there can't be any interaction with the system? This is the part that seems less obvious to me. It is said to be a zero player game, right? You set it up and you see it play itself till it dies, you die, or it grows stale or you grow bored. You do not interact with it so how would you make it calculate what you need?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Yep, you got it. It's more like a programmable calculator than a real computer at the moment, but that's only a superficial difference. For instance, if you wired a switch into your computer and you set the 'life' game to initiate a glider on a switch press then you could interact with it.

Excuse my ignorance, but I didn't understand a word of what the article was about. Could you explain me?

by Novash 17y ago

Excuse my ignorance, but I didn't understand a word of what the article was about. Could you explain me?

No problem, it's a pretty academic exercise what they're doing there but it is very interesting for lots of reasons. The game of life is a cellular automaton 'game' designed by John Conway, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life for lots more detail. Conways life has been proven to be 'Turning complete', which means that it can compute anything worth computing, even though due to practical limitations (time, memory) plenty of things that you could compute in theory in practice are not worth waiting for. The basis of the 'Turing Completeness' argument for the game of life revolves around the 'glider', a simple pattern that moves across the grid that the 'life' cells play out their existence on. These gliders can be set up and timed in such a way that you can form simple logic gates with them, and from these simple gates you can construct more complicated digital logic circuitry, like adders and so on. This in turn can lead to a life based universal computer, and it seems that these people have done just that. On top of that they seem to have a 'translator' that will produce the 'life' pattern you need to compute arbitrary calculations, which is the essence of a higher level language (the 'machine' language of life could be considered the initial state of the cells, to produce that you could set them all up by hand or you could have a computer program help you doing it). I hope that explains it accurately enough and I hope that if it is accurate that it is clear.

Novash 17y ago
Finished studying the theory. Now it kind of makes more sense, thanks. So, they created a translator to give you the initial state that would end up calculating what you need? Cool, but how can they create a universal calculator if there can't be any interaction with the system? This is the part that seems less obvious to me. It is said to be a zero player game, right? You set it up and you see it play itself till it dies, you die, or it grows stale or you grow bored. You do not interact with it so how would you make it calculate what you need?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Yep, you got it. It's more like a programmable calculator than a real computer at the moment, but that's only a superficial difference. For instance, if you wired a switch into your computer and you set the 'life' game to initiate a glider on a switch press then you could interact with it.