Quick question

[natejasper133]

Why didn't Life-like cellular automata get invented much earlier? The rules are incredibly simple, and it doesn't need computers to play.

[83bismuth38]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[KittyTac]

Answered in a similar thread by me. The one who invented them didn't consider them interesting and didn't publish. Or that recording did not survive, especially if it was first discovered in the middle ages.

[dvgrn]

Why didn't Life-like cellular automata get invented much earlier? The rules are incredibly simple, and it doesn't need computers to play.

Answered in a similar thread by me. The one who invented them didn't consider them interesting and didn't publish. Or that recording did not survive, especially if it was first discovered in the middle ages.

Not just a "similar thread" -- that's word-for word your identical question. OP therefore banned as a spambot.

Maybe I won't delete the thread, though, since it makes for entertaining speculation. As I think I've said elsewhere, I'm just waiting for archaeologists to open up an undisturbed 100,000-year-old cave in France or somewhere, and find a square grid scratched into a flat rock, with five dust-covered pebbles on it in the shape of a glider... or twenty pebbles making a loafer would be better, of course, or 37 pebbles making the as-yet-undiscovered (or so we thought) small c/18 spaceship.

Neanderthals had bigger brains than modern humans, so they could have invented B3/S23 Life out of sheer boredom. Maybe they died out because they spent too much time running mental spaceship simulations.

[Macbi]

Evolution certainly discovered cellular automata long before humans did, and used it to decorate seashells.

[77topaz]

I think one major factor in the recency of CA research, specifically CGoL, is that, to study the evolution of anything but the most basic patterns, you really need computing power. Before the 1970s, there really wasn't any way to simulate those larger patterns in any feasible time.

[Apple Bottom]

I think one major factor in the recency of CA research, specifically CGoL, is that, to study the evolution of anything but the most basic patterns, you really need computing power. Before the 1970s, there really wasn't any way to simulate those larger patterns in any feasible time.

Mind, CAs were studied considerably earlier than the 1970s, or even 1969 --- it didn't start with Life! And there was a lot of good research by the time Life was invented; after all, research, especially in mathematics, can amount to much more than running search tools to find patterns matching certain criteria, or even putting these together in interesting ways.

Re: computing power, this is a good point though. Remember that although it was known right from the start that Life was universal (based, indeed, on one of those rather more abstract results previously proven for certain classes of CAs), even the glider wasn't found immediately. (There's an interesting description of its discovery in Conway's biography, BTW, quoted on the LifeWiki.) Considering how basic and fundamental this particular pattern is, this really drives home how difficult it is to evolve Life patterns when all you've got is a pen and paper (or a Go board, or something similarly manual).

[Macbi]

Remember that although it was known right from the start that Life was universal (based, indeed, on one of those rather more abstract results previously proven for certain classes of CAs), even the glider wasn't found immediately.

Is this true? I thought GoL was only proven universal once some glider circuitry had been developed.

[Apple Bottom]

Remember that although it was known right from the start that Life was universal (based, indeed, on one of those rather more abstract results previously proven for certain classes of CAs), even the glider wasn't found immediately.

Is this true? I thought GoL was only proven universal once some glider circuitry had been developed.

I might be misremembering things, but I'm 99.44% certain that it was known that Life was universal, it just wasn't clear how it was universal.

[Macbi]

I think you are misremembering. That would be extremely magical if true.

[Apple Bottom]

I think you are misremembering. That would be extremely magical if true.

You're probably right. I could've sworn, though... oh well.