Learning about Innovation from Half a Century of Conway's Game of Life

Post by enslavedrobot » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

leepyaar wrote: post #12

kccqzy wrote: post #4

> if we want to get closer to the study of the pure phenomenon of innovation Innovation in the real world is often driven by the usual incentives of capitalism, like the basic need to out-compete the competitors by improving quality or lowering costs. I do not really think Game of Life serves as a model for innovation in the real world; it might serve as a model of the pure phenomenon of innovation. In the real world…

This is a myopic view. How would we have gotten to the point of human history when capitalism became predominant if innovation is driven by capitalism? Also, humanity is hardly an economy of capitalism any more. More similar to oligarchical capital feudalism.

Post by brzozowski » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 3:51 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #11

The cool thing about Conway's Game of Life is that you can't predict it unless you do the full recursion, there is no shortcut. It relates to external undecidability of recurrent processes.

Post by slightwinder » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

seanw444 wrote: post #13

procgen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's much to be said!

It's unfortunate that people seem to be prejudiced against Wolfram at this point, when the field has a lot to explore and learn from. Cellular automata are so powerful, yet so conceptually simple, it wouldn't surprise me if it did have revelations for more fundamental concepts of the universe. What if the fundamentals of the universe are so simple it'd shock us, we just haven't looked at it from the right perspective…

Post by karparov » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

seanw444 wrote: post #19

9283409232 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should be able to separate the merits of the work from the worker but people didn't just randomly decide to not like Wolfram. He is a narcissist of the highest order.

Perhaps he is, but the field isn't worth discounting nonetheless, and he's one of the most prominent researchers of it.

Post by criddell » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

seanw444 wrote: post #13

procgen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's much to be said!

It's unfortunate that people seem to be prejudiced against Wolfram at this point, when the field has a lot to explore and learn from. Cellular automata are so powerful, yet so conceptually simple, it wouldn't surprise me if it did have revelations for more fundamental concepts of the universe. What if the fundamentals of the universe are so simple it'd shock us, we just haven't looked at it from the right perspective…