Puffer Train Debris Synthesization Rake

[codeholic]

As you may have seen, just a mere fact, that a pattern is new, doesn't make it notable. So, going back to my question, what makes your pattern notable?

[twinb7]

This isn't the shick engine, look closer!! It's a modification to it, that emits glider pairs + incomplete traffic lights!!

So what? Why does it make it notable?

Look, it might not be the most important thing in the Life universe, but people want to explore! Why do you need to criticize? It may not be the most impressive, but it's something. And I think if someone is new to Life- or even not- they may feel excited at even a small discovery.

[dvgrn]

@Dvrgn:
I guess you're right, but it kinda feels like almost everything to be discovered in Life has been discovered.

Heh, it always seems funny to hear people say that. New discoveries have a tendency to build on older discoveries, so nowadays there are more opportunities to discover new things now than ever before -- in a sense, anyway!

The problem is that when there are more older discoveries, it takes longer to understand them all. It can be harder to learn to use the search utilities and other tools that you might need in some cases to get to the frontiers of new research. It's hard to even know whether a "new discovery" is really new or not, without spending a lot of time going through old material.

A good example is phdanielli's recent modification of a Schick engine. It's quite likely that someone built that exact combination of MWSSes and tried it out over forty years ago, when Schick engines were new. Maybe several people. Possibly even on graph paper, or on a Go board or a tiled kitchen floor. Hard to know for sure, because the result would have been discarded as too messy to be useful, or "not notable", or however you want to say that.

The question of what's notable or not is tricky to explain, and of course it may change over time and be different for different people. For example, the Schick-based twin-toad puffer shown on that page of Lifeline hopefully won't ever get added to the LifeWiki, because nowadays it's just one of a zillion different ways of making a Schick engine spew junk.

I have yet to find an automata that I can really sink my teeth into and break new ground...

Seems like you're going the right way about it so far. People who keep experimenting and asking questions eventually tend to stumble on odd corners of CA-space that nobody has thought to explore yet -- it takes patience, but not too much patience.

[phdanielli]

Thx, Dvgrn and TwinB7, you both make me the most luckiest person in the world!!

[NickGotts]

Hi,

I am working toward an update of the quasi-blog Dave Greene mentioned - on it, you'll find a bunch of patterns which grow in complexity for as long as I have been able to follow them, starting with either 50 cells (two modified Gosper puffers running perpendicularly) or 32 cells (two pairs of switch engines, also running perpendicularly). I've now more or less finished stage 1 of this process - sorting 15 years worth of results run on various machines using various software and pattern formats, eliminating duplicates, standardizing nomenclature - and am on to stage 2: reviewing what's worth posting, and plugging easily filled gaps.

Meanwhile, the 50-cell patterns are discussed here:
Gotts, N.M. (2009). Ramifying feedback networks, cross-scale interactions and emergent quasi-individuals in Conway's Game of Life. Artificial Life 15, 351-375. DOI: 10.1162/artl.2009.Gotts.009.

The emergence of complexity in "sparse life" (infinite random fields of very low density) is discussed here:
Gotts, N.M. (2000). Emergent phenomena in large sparse random arrays of Conway's "Game of Life". International Journal of Systems Science 31, 873-894. DOI: 10.1080/002077200406598.

Results of the two papers above are brought together and some implications for the study of complexity in general are discussed in this book chapter:
Gotts, N.M. (2011) Emergent Complexity in Conway’s Game of Life. In Adamatzky, A. (ed) Game of Life Cellular Automata, Springer, pp.389-436.

[lukebradford]

Cool thread! Some very good stuff here - notable, trivial, old, new, whatever.

[phdanielli]

@NickGotts:
Even you replied!! Is dis a dream??

[twinb7]

Man, it's strange to think that I find Nick Gotts famous.

[phdanielli]

He isn't?? (famous)

[NickGotts]

I think I can safely say I'm not!

Whether I should be, of course, is another matter.

[phdanielli]

In my opinion, anyone who makes it up to the life wiki or pentadecathlon is famous. (Or even have >1000 people watch your thread)