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A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

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Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#51

Post by Mathnerd314 »

davesque wrote: post #50

This makes me wonder. If cells were occasionally activated in random positions, what sorts of modifications to the architecture would be necessary to make the system robust and still able to carry out its computations with a reasonable probability of success? Would that even be possible? In other words, what kinds of modifications to this system would make it more like a natural biological system that has to cope wit…

Cells activating in random positions seems like a high bar. How robust are you to a rock suddenly appearing inside your body? (e.g. inside your heart?)

A lower bar might be being robust to individual spaceships/gliders coming in from outside. But even there a collection of gliders is probably going to break through.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#52

Post by isx726552 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #35
jodrellblank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One that Conway didn't like much, saying (roughly) that it had all been explored and proved and other work of his was more interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA in this Numberphile interview with him.

This reminds me a lot of the aging rockstar who hates the billboard top 10 hit that he always gets asked to play.

Like Jani Lane saying “I could shoot myself in the @#%*ing head” for writing “Cherry Pie” in the 80s:

https://youtu.be/dNNa8wbKGb4

I imagine there are a lot of people in this industry who feel that way about some their creations…

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#53

Post by BoxOfRain »

gumby wrote: post #27

Love this. Next step: host Emacs on life.

Step after that, bitcoin but it's on DNA strands and new coins are generated every time the host cell reproduces. The maximum number of coins is reached when the biosphere is reduced to an amorphous grey goo.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#54

Post by agumonkey »

spicybright wrote: post #3

I still can't get over how much interest the game of life maintains since it's invention. It might just be my favorite "field" of CS at this point. It's such a satisfying intersection of maths, coding, "biology", and "biological engineering".

some people in biology labs also made a game of life out of dna tiles (google nicolas schabanel / damien woods)

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#55

Post by davesque »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #51
davesque wrote: post #50

This makes me wonder. If cells were occasionally activated in random positions, what sorts of modifications to the architecture would be necessary to make the system robust and still able to carry out its computations with a reasonable probability of success? Would that even be possible? In other words, what kinds of modifications to this system would make it more like a natural biological system that has to cope wit…

Cells activating in random positions seems like a high bar. How robust are you to a rock suddenly appearing inside your body? (e.g. inside your heart?) A lower bar might be being robust to individual spaceships/gliders coming in from outside. But even there a collection of gliders is probably going to break through.

Yep, restricting things to coming from the outside might be more of a realistic challenge. I think I had a more academic version of the question in mind. Seems like we already have tech that is designed to handle a certain degree of pure randomness. For example, we have error-checked RAM.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#56

Post by drdeca »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #51
davesque wrote: post #50

This makes me wonder. If cells were occasionally activated in random positions, what sorts of modifications to the architecture would be necessary to make the system robust and still able to carry out its computations with a reasonable probability of success? Would that even be possible? In other words, what kinds of modifications to this system would make it more like a natural biological system that has to cope wit…

Cells activating in random positions seems like a high bar. How robust are you to a rock suddenly appearing inside your body? (e.g. inside your heart?) A lower bar might be being robust to individual spaceships/gliders coming in from outside. But even there a collection of gliders is probably going to break through.

I think it would be cool to have a structure with a line where, no matter where vertically (within a large range of vertical positions) a single glider crossed the line to the right , and no matter which of the 4(?) phases the glider has, signals would be sent somewhere indicating generally where the glider crossed, and the structure eventually returning to how it was (other than the signals it sent out) .

Is such a structure possible? If so, how short can its recovery time be?

How good can the resolution of how specifically it detects the locations of the gliders be?

We know that GoL is Turing complete, and if the field is initialized with random noise, then for any fixed finite pattern, as the board size goes to infinity, the probability that that pattern appears somewhere in the noise approaches 1. (of course, I'm talking about enormous board sizes, possibly with many many more cells than there are protons in the visible universe, not talking about anything resembling practicality.) If intelligence and agency is computable (which, it seems like it should be), "any fixed finite pattern" would include structures which, for some amount of time, before they are destroyed by surrounding noise, would simulate an intelligent agent.

If there are structures which, when surrounded by stuff initialized with noise, has a high probability of being able to withstand this noise, and then proceed to clear out the noise in order to e.g. make copy of itself, or just to grow, then we would expect the fraction of an infinite board containing such patterns (or things derived from them) to grow over time.

But, whether such structures can exist in GoL, in part depends, I think, on whether any large structures can withstand noise (or, having a high chance of withstanding it).

(I am defining "structures" in a way where a structure is allowed to include as part of it a large empty region (of any fixed size) on its periphery. This should assist in withstanding the noise, because it limits what things the core part of the structure could be faced with, to things which can travel a distance)

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#57

Post by WJW »

davesque wrote: post #49
AprilArcus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested to learn that DNA is not actually read-only. Besides viruses like HIV and transposable elements which permanently splice themselves in to the host's DNA, antibodies gain specificity through irreversible self-editing of the lymphocyte's genome via a similar (and perhaps, evolutionarily related) mechanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination

Fascinating. Thanks so much for this! Natural biology really is miraculous (to use a loaded term).

Biology uses only global variables. All processes can write to all others. We wouldn't do this in software because the human mind can't handle it (leading to bugs), but evolution has no such constraint.

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#58

Post by wanderingstan »

mirekrusin wrote: post #44
Aperocky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think of this as the power of simplicity. A transistor is a simple piece of electronic, when combined in billions, it supports the incredible information transformation we see today.

This is great thought. How many transistors make computer interesting has some parallels with how many neutrons create consciousness.

I suspect you mean neurons, but yes, a given amount of neutrons are also apparently needed for consciousness!

Re: A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

#59

Post by WJW »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #51
davesque wrote: post #50

This makes me wonder. If cells were occasionally activated in random positions, what sorts of modifications to the architecture would be necessary to make the system robust and still able to carry out its computations with a reasonable probability of success? Would that even be possible? In other words, what kinds of modifications to this system would make it more like a natural biological system that has to cope wit…

Cells activating in random positions seems like a high bar. How robust are you to a rock suddenly appearing inside your body? (e.g. inside your heart?) A lower bar might be being robust to individual spaceships/gliders coming in from outside. But even there a collection of gliders is probably going to break through.

Fascinating question. I suppose it depends on the size of the rock? Anything big "enough" would cause real problems, but a single molecule of rock would probably not matter too much. Presumably cosmic rays are triggering single neuron molecules all the time, but because there is a lot of redundancy this does not propagate into real activity.
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