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Building a computer in Conway's game of life

nicolasloizeau.com

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Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#41

Post by rantwasp »

jcims wrote: post #38
rantwasp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my favorite is https://youtu.be/LQmTKxI4Wn4 once you look at microbiology you cannot unsee that it looks just like a massive, complicated stochasticaly-driven computer

Whoa, that's crazy. Every time I go down this rabbit hole I get re-convinced of panspermia. Maybe when I retire I'll study enough statistics and molecular biology to try to get my head around it. Or by then we'll be talking to aliens and the question will be moot.

you can do a mooc on molecular biology pretty easily if your goal is to get a superficial understanding of it. you don’t need to wait until you retire :)

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#42

Post by zamadatix »

xaedes wrote: post #27
zamadatix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop you from making logic gates out of patterns of pebbles on a beach exactly?

Without anyone performing the necessary pattern transformations to make it "work" this will be very static and boring... With computer in GOL you have GOL which will do the pattern transformations.

Nothing about the rules of GOL performs the necessary pattern transformations. You could say the pebbles follow the rules of GOL and put some energy into performing those transformations. This is what a computer does with GOL.

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#43

Post by zamadatix »

testermelon wrote: post #26
zamadatix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop you from making logic gates out of patterns of pebbles on a beach exactly?

Because the pebbles stay there when nothing knock it off. And when something knock it off we can't reliably know where it will go?

There is nothing to knock of a starting condition for the GOL until you put energy into it. There is no reason, for instance, you couldn't have a little robot moving the pebbles according to GOL rules. If you say the robot is the thing doing the computation the such is the case of the computer running this GOL simulation.

If you say it's not pebbles then imagine a mechanical computer built out of them. Provide some kinetic energy and rocks begin to compute just as the silicon in your computer begins to compute when you put electrical energy into it.

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#44

Post by zamadatix »

usefulcat wrote: post #28
zamadatix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to stop you from making logic gates out of patterns of pebbles on a beach exactly?

Given enough pebbles and a large enough beach, you could make a drawing--and so a design--of just about anything. But this is arguably both a design and a concrete implementation of a kind of machine.

Your phone is just a drawing/design until you put energy into it as well. Then things start to "compute" due to the pattern of interactions that energy creates. There is no law of the universe that says this energy must be electrical.

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#45

Post by leijurv »

fblifeadvice645 wrote: post #39
rantwasp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. without any spoilers there are literally tens of books out there that explore this very same idea. (some of them hard scifi)

you could at least give some names :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_(Sawyer_novel)

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#46

Post by Strilanc »

beachy wrote: post #20

I have always wondered if intelligence could emerge from a game of life, given a massive board and sufficient random seeds.

It would be difficult. In particular, unlike in our world, it's very difficult to create anything like a stable membrane or barrier in the game of life. And patterns are extremely susceptible to falling apart if perturbed. So you would generally expect a game-of-life-based entity touching anything to die as a result.

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#47

Post by goldenkey »

selestify wrote: post #14
goldenkey wrote: post #12

I wonder what the most elegant Turing-complete universe is. I believe it to be a system based on collision-based computing [1]. My hunch is this: Matter and Energy have a duality that is analogous to code and data. Einstein likened the speed of light to the speed of information. Wolfram/Toffoli/Fredkin or well, any other Cellular Automata specialist, studied the rate of propagation in CA, Lyapunov exponents. [2] Now…

It seems your post got cut off :(

What part of it? I'm not noticing any anomaly.

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#48

Post by goldenkey »

nessunodoro wrote: post #30
goldenkey wrote: post #12

I wonder what the most elegant Turing-complete universe is. I believe it to be a system based on collision-based computing [1]. My hunch is this: Matter and Energy have a duality that is analogous to code and data. Einstein likened the speed of light to the speed of information. Wolfram/Toffoli/Fredkin or well, any other Cellular Automata specialist, studied the rate of propagation in CA, Lyapunov exponents. [2] Now…

> if we can create a digital system which provides for code data duality So.. LISP?

In some respects. Polymorphic code is more like it, ie. DNA. DNA is data, but it creates processes (code) that produce proteins that then alter the data through histones and methylation and transcription factors. It becomes insanely non-linear and chaotic, the organism becoming an amalgamation of code and data in flux.

Re: Building a computer in Conway's game of life

#50

Post by scollet »

zamadatix wrote: post #43
testermelon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the pebbles stay there when nothing knock it off. And when something knock it off we can't reliably know where it will go?

There is nothing to knock of a starting condition for the GOL until you put energy into it. There is no reason, for instance, you couldn't have a little robot moving the pebbles according to GOL rules. If you say the robot is the thing doing the computation the such is the case of the computer running this GOL simulation. If you say it's not pebbles then imagine a mechanical computer built out of them. Provide some k…

https://xkcd.com/505/

For any passerbys

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