

Conway's Game of Life Extrusion - brunoc
http://www.qotile.net/blog/wp/?p=600

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solipsist
Cellular automata, which includes Conway's Game of Life, is impressive because
of the complexity that arises from simplicity. Starting from just a few simple
rules and starting arrangements, structures can appear that you would never
have expected.

Some people believe that our universe could be a type of cellular automata
itself.

There are some interesting connections between our universe and the type of
cellular automata like Conway's Game of Life. It is possible to predict events
in the future by looking at the big picture. Various levels and hierarchies of
structures are formed in Conway's Game of Life (e.g. gliders and glider guns)
that seem to obey their own rules. However, these macro rules are nowhere
close to the original micro rules of the simulation. While we can look at
these macro rules to make certain predictions, the only way we can determine
every cell's state in the future is by letting the simulation play out one
generation at a time.

~~~
baddox
What I find interesting is that _deterministic_ computation (like cellular
automata) does not mean _predictable_ results. Vast complexity, both in
seemingly random/noisy patterns and repetitive twisting/scrolling patterns,
can emerge from the simplest rules. This seems to indicate that a
deterministic model of the human brain/mind (or for that matter, the entire
universe) does not lead to the unsatisfactory dehumanizing implication that
we're all predictable or lack free will.

~~~
mkrecny
And yet if a system is deterministic, it certainly is predictable (read: able
to be predicted) and does lack free will. So if the universe is a
deterministic automata the 'unsatisfactory dehumanizing implication' stands.
Despite this, the only way to predict the state of a Conway system n
iterations from now is to allow the system to run for n iterations. No one
could actually model the universe precisely by creating a cellular automata.
The automata would have to contain as much information as the universe, so it
couldn't fit within the universe. Also even if the builder did know the system
rules and a valid starting condition he could only compute as fast as 1
iteration per iteration of the actual universe...and hence not be able to
outpace the universe and predict the future. I think solipsist is right about
macro vs micro rules. And the macro rules themselves have macro rules ad
infinitum. At some point you get to macro rules that try to describe human
behavior (which apparently don't work very well). I don't think the cellular
automata reductionist approach will help us too much in predicting the future
in our universe for reasons mentioned above. We may be better off with macro
rules like Newtonian physics and so forth.

~~~
Dn_Ab
By your parenthetical I assume you know of chaotic systems. But yeah, its been
some time since I read philosophy but I vaguely remember that you still aren't
guaranteed free will just cause things are undeterministic. This is because
since you cannot show that an event was caused you cannot prove that your
actions led to the event. How do you know that it is because of your actions
that some event occurred or you chose to act as you did if things don't
necessarily lead from one another? And the other side is true too. Just cause
things are determined does not necessitate free will be lost. It was usually
sugar coated but I always took it as even with just the illusion of free
choice, that ability to be able to seemingly choose what you would have
anyways is free will.

I stopped thinking about such things as I always got stuck in a head wrenching
recursive loop of futility.

~~~
mkrecny
: ) yeah I know how you feel

------
diiq
I would never have thought to take the licence of adding film grain, but it
really makes the images tangible --- like bizarre long-ignored government
surveillance photos.

~~~
teraflop
I don't think the film grain was added separately. LuxRender uses path
tracing, which inherently produces noise that decreases as the computation
progresses.

------
arketyp
There were similar renderings of Conway's Game of Life in Wolfram's A New Kind
of Science, but by way of 1D-slices through time and grayscaling the second
axis. These have the famous class 4 property that Wolfram raves about, leading
to _the principle of computational equivalence_ and such godless sentences.

------
mshron
Here are instructions for turning Blender files into RepRap instructions. I
would pay to hang something like this on my wall.

[http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Using_Blender_for_making_prin...](http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Using_Blender_for_making_print-
sheets)

~~~
rgbrgb
You should get in touch with the artist (Paul Slocum). I'm sure he'd oblige.

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fsiefken
What i found very nice is graphs of the population size through generations of
metuselah's, with my favorite being the R-pentomino
<http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=R-pentomino>

~~~
xa
Monitoring population size through generations in Conway's Game of Life was
the premise of my state science fair project. I ended up going further and
changing the rule parameters to see which were the most optimal ones, but if
you want to see the population vs. generation graphs for the original rules,
here they are:

12 pentominoes: <http://i.imgur.com/wrO3o.png>

Population over 50 generations graph: <http://i.imgur.com/TIRgK.png>

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quux
Reminds me of how the Tralfamadorians see things.

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cool-RR
Amazing. These look like fantastic cities.

~~~
brunoc
Yeah I thought the same thing too - on a larger scale with a couple of
smoothing algorithms one could end up with some interesting city landscapes.

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mcburton
These would be amazing to build with a 3D printer. If I had the time I'd try
building one by hand using legos.

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rgbrgb
These are amazing, Slocum is pretty great. But, I submitted this before. Can
anyone explain how double-submits are moderated?

~~~
nitrogen
As I understand it, if the URI doesn't match exactly, or the story is no
longer in Hacker News's RAM, the duplicate won't be caught. I could be wrong,
but I seem to remember pg or someone saying that HN only checks the stories
currently loaded in RAM for duplicates.

The benefit of this is that old stories can be rediscovered by new users.

