The basics, JIC anyone here is still unfamiliar with the Game:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
And generalizing Games from there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-like_cellular_automaton
Question #1: How far has Lifeology(?) advanced since 2001, for people similar to your younger self (without awesome skills, or huge time investment) to have a chance at making their own lucky discoveries, and becoming modest Somebodies in the community?
Question #2: How highly (or otherwise) would you rate Wikipedia's articles on Conway's Game of Life, and closely-related topics?
Have you followed the https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w... thread where Tetris was implemented using their Cogol (and low level QFTASM) programming language? I'm curious if that work led to any new insights and if it found any usage beyond implementing Tetris.
Why is Conway's Game of Life so interesting? Does it prove anything or lead to insightful discoveries? The game itself seems to me, like a fun little toy at best.
> boojum reflector
That absolutely sounds like a codename from one of cstross's Laundry Files novels. (I think "boojum" was actually part of one, but I don't recall which.)
edit: found it, it was from A Colder War, which is a great novellette: https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
I've been fascinated by Cellular Automata and the Game of Life ever since seeing the art installation of _Network IV_ by James Seawright. It was at Sea-Tac Airport, and has since been removed.
There's some debate whether it was the Game of Life or some other automata, but I remember the sounds of the relays clacking and the light bulbs humming so distinctly. It certainly had a "Game of Life vibe".
Are you aware of this art installation? Ever seen it?
Conway has said GOL is not something he is particularly pleased got as famous as it did. (Ref: https://youtu.be/R9Plq-D1gEk?t=600)
Why do you think that is?
Edit: This is the video I meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA
A silly question and a PSA:
1. There was a two-player game called The Immigration Game [1] using GoL rules. Has anyone actually played this? Even better, has anyone developed an AI to play it? Is there really much of a game there?
2. The PSA: The Immigration Game was described in Lifeline, a 1970's era (typewritten!) newsletter about GoL. I managed to obtain a set of them. I've been planning to scan them and make them available online. I don't think there is any ground breaking info in them, after all, folk were programming on mainframes (surreptitiously).
[1]. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/129088/the-immigration-g...
Decades ago, I read an article in Byte magazine discussing various implementations of GoL. The article ended with an implementation in one line of APL. What are the chances you (or anyone) still has that article, and that one line program?
Is there a 3d equivalent of the game? What would be different about it?
What are the coolest problems that have been recently solved?
What are the coolest open problems you'd like to see solved?
What’s the largest world we can run these days?
Are they run on gpus now?
Has anyone looked into ASICs?
Is caching heavily used for optimization?
Not a question but as a fellow Life enthusiast I thought I’d surface an alternative Life hack I made a few years ago based on physical Kong Bucks from Stephenson’s Snow Crash: https://kong.cash/
Each note is an actual flexible polyimide PCB containing a hardware storage wallet - the PCBs are translucent in parts or solid in others depending on a copper pour but overprinted with ink using a special UV process - but one of the security features is when one holds a note up to the light one can see a Game or Life program which when executed emits a corresponding number of gliders and oscillators as the notes value. This feature is to prevent one from “washing” a note and printing a different value as is done with $5 and $100 US bills for instance as the copper pour is “baked” into the medium.
Writing a c program to encode arbitrary numbers into a Game of Life program was a very fun distraction during an otherwise thorny project that involved connecting people from the print world to people from the electronics world while shaving a few thousand cycles off a crypto library with ECDSA P256 operations before the smart phone powering the chips via NFC turned off. Real engineering work to bring cryptographic proof of authenticity that unfortunately gets written off as a 'crypto scam' when the poc token attached to the circuit boards was the least interesting part.
One can see some of the denominations here: https://twitter.com/NoviolNFT/status/1341468948416512000
What's your take on continuous life? SmoothLife, Lenia and Bert Wang-Chak Chan work in general?
Over the years there must have been countless interesting generalizations of Life. I wonder if there is good concise reference that classifies and groups the main ideas that have been proven "productive", in the sense that they open up non-trivially different and interesting types of dynamic behavior?
A while ago I was toying with the idea of introducing a "macro" stimulus. Basically coupling the local rules of the game to global metrics like how many nodes are alive. This is emulating a bit agent based modeling in economics and in particular the role of regulators raising or lowering rates, alternatively a physical system exposed to higher or lower temperature. But what happens (at least with a simple implementation) is that whatever "stimulus" is introduced tends to overwhelm the known patterns, there seems to be little new "emergent" behavior in the coupled system.
https://www.openriskmanagement.com/game_of_life_with_macroec...
What would be your advice/roadmap for someone who wants to start with automated exploration of emergent behaviour in systems that are similar to GoL?
I think it would be interesting to try transfering some of the automated search techniques to Minecraft's redstone mechanics, even though it probably doesn't fit the definition of a celular automata. Redstone is a feature in a videogame Minecraft that acts similar to logic circuits. Because building mechanics in Minecraft is inately restrictive (building is snapped to the 3d grid of "blocks", and there is only a limited number of blocks that all have predefined behaviour), there is naturally a community of people using redstones in ways that serve no purpose to the core gameplay loop, such as flying machines (think GoL's ships) [0], computers (since Minecraft's redstone is practically Turing-complete) [1] [2] or printers/autobuilders [3]. I would go so far as to say that redstone is the GoL for nerdy Zoomers.
[0] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Flying_machines
[1] https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition...
[2] https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Redstone_compute...
1. Are there any practical/real life applications for Game of Life?
2. Has any discovery made in life been used in real life or any practical application?
Thank you for the link to the book. I have always been interested in how to make the starting shapes. I am going to study the book more but started to realize that there are re-usable shapes that can be used to make more complex shapes (early, still, oscillators, gliders, etc..). This seems to be what I was looking for with the starting x/y and then the rule combo and pattern.
I was also thinking there must be a better way than knowing exactly how big the board is vs an infinite board. Also making the edges either always dead or alive VS letting the shapes pass through like pac-man.
Here is my horrible implementation using HTML canvas, JS/JQuery.
https://github.com/JoshuaMichaelHanson/GOL/blob/master/js/go...
Yes, I also made a new green account so as to not dox myself with my other accounts.
I haven't studied CS or bio. Do I understand correctly that what makes cellular automata special is they're approachable and demonstrate how complexity can emerge from simple rules (e.g. analogously to how life may have come to be)?
Do other games (or simulations) demonstrate similar ideas, or are cellular automata a rare case?
I discovered Langton ants and Turmites a couple of months ago, I guess these are a subset of cellular automata. I was talking with a friend about using them somehow for art somehow (music generation came to mind), is this a topic you might know about and could recommend some resources to get started?
Back in the day I read an article on HashLife in Dr Dobbs, which had a bit of an effect on me in terms of software architecture in terms of a set of new approaches, tightly coupled, providing astounding results.
Are there other interesting and unexpected algorithms in implementations of GoL?
Did the Game of Life change anything in your world view? Your belief in god, or how you view society and societal changes? Even if the change is not rigorous or logical but something anecdotal that nonetheless changed your emotions, I'd be glad to hear about it.
Where would you direct someone for tips on implementing Game of Life?
I made a small solar powered CGOL(https://davidhampgonsalves.com/solar-powered-conways-game-of...) that has a low pixel count. After 100 frames it randomly generates a new starting point b/c I didn't implement loop detection.
Are their any algorithms or techniques for generating interesting starting states?
Have you dug a bit in the concept under wolframphysics.org? Discretization of PDE equations is interesting and some generating-functionology/combinatorics can be spotted more or less over there. CAs can enter anything under the computational umbrella, question being how sleekly. Have they achieved something already, do you share their interests? (you said "ama")
I'm super interested in cellular automata.
One thing that particular piques my interest is the diversity of possible automata, not just forms in any particular one, but diversity of rule sets as well.
What do you think is special about the GOL rule set compared to other life-like rules?
Do you think it was a historical accident this particular rule set became so famous, or not?
Are there alternatives you are also interested in?
Maybe this question is too low-concept, but what is your opinion of the glider as a Hacker symbol?
This post was funny to read thinking OP was referring to the old "Game of Life" board game.
Do you subconsciously see gliders and other patterns in your day to day life? In your dreams?
This is not a question about GoL directly but more generally about CA. Do you have a sense for what the probability of a random CA is to be TME? Do you have any idea of how to automate the process, if not in general, then at least for a class of CA?
I would like to see a setup which is going to spawn as much dots as possible, I mean something like a gun but having as little static elements as possible while creating as much gliders as possible.
Not a serious question, but what should I improve to make my g.o.l. background cooler @ https://www.franzai.com/ ?
If you do a second edition, I would love a chapter on Life implementations, particularly how to implement a Life simulator that can execute these enormous patterns efficiently.
What do you think about other forms of cellular automata?
I came across excitable media recently and found it fascinating.
Do you have any other examples of cellular automata you found interesting or worth pursuing?
many similar life simulations in more dimensions (3d,4d, etc) or with diferent shapes that are interesting at all? (im obviously thinking hexagonal or trianglar)
Could the Game of Life run Doom, since it's Turing-complete ? I remember seeing an excerpt of a video where you could run the Goal inside the GoL.
I e always wondered are there setups in GOL that seem to go on forever with new patterns or does everything ready a static or repeating state?
You would like subleq/muxleq languages them.
What are the best ways to keep up with GOL developments?
Links you posted and hobbyist forums, formal research papers, or something else?
Did you ever meet or interact with Conway?
Given a torus what initial configuration yields the maximum number of unique generations? :)
What is in common between the bazillions of CGoL implemetations? Is convergance possible?
Have there been any interesting applications of fuzzy logic or neural nets for rules?
What would an operating system look like built using conway’s game of life ?
Do you think asking a candidate to implement GOL in a 45 minute live coding exercise job interview and then expecting a fully working implementation if it’s clear they have never come across the problem before?
Devs I ask this come down 50:50 on if it’s reasonable or not.
Do you see a role for generative AI to discover new patterns?
What has the Conway game of life done for mankind lately?
Thank you for sharing your curiosity with the world
What is something that you think the average HN user would find useful/surprising about Life? How could it apply to their daily lives?
Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" posited the study of cellular automata as a revolutionary new field of science. Did you agree then? Do you now? If you changed you mind, why?
do you like rule 110 better than conways game?
Why you are so clever than 99.9999% of the world's population?
What is so special about the game of life? how does it differ from some simple game mechanics found in other videogames? The aim of this question is to understand what motivates and fuels passion for yourself and people in your community
Have you read Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game by Andrew R. Gallimore [0], and do you have any thoughts on his cosmology vis a vis cellular automata? And perhaps also the same question related to Stephen Wolfram's physics project?
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Information-Theory-Psychedelic-...
Shouldn't this be a "Ask HN" or something similar? Also, let's not make AMAs a thing on HN. Better to post an interesting link and then engage with people in the comments.
We see people doing insane things nowadays with Conway's Life, such as simulating CPUs.
Two questions:
1) How are people building things this complex? Are there open source libraries and toolkits for this - building blocks for chunks of functionality that can be assembled?
2) For you, what are the most interesting, impressive and varied things that you've seen with Life? Is it just these increasing levels of complexity, or maybe something else?