
Fully self-directed replication - dvgrn
https://cp4space.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/fully-self-directed-replication/
======
dvgrn
A self-constructing "0E0P" Conway's Life metacell is finally in working order!

The structure behaves like a single cell, obeying the rules of Life or
whatever CA rule it's programmed to emulate. Unlike previous metacells, if a
new cell has to be born, one of its neighbor metacells has to construct it
starting from empty space.

~~~
leetbulb
metacells blow my mind. i'll leave this here for anyone else interested:
[https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-
a-w...](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-
game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life)

------
gene-h
While making interesting constructs in cellular automata is a fun exercise,
there is the possibility that the constructs might be useful in the real
world. In the near term, it is much easier to make a molecular scale cellular
automata than it is to make a conventional processor. The latter requires a
complicated means of stitching together molecules, the former is a crystal
which is much simpler to make. So a molecular cellular automata could
potentially enable us to make a computer with a mole quantity of logic gates,
but we need some way to program said computer. All this work in cellular
automata constructs provides a way to do this. Although the more likely
application of such molecular cellular automata might be the formation of
patterns below the wavelength of light.

------
callesgg
That made me think of a DMT trip. Makes me wounder about the nature of
reality.

