Talk:Flip-flop (disambiguation)

If there is the first element in the list then why is there even the second and third ones lmao Testitemqlstudop (talk) 10:27, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

The LifeWiki tends to document existing usage of terms; historical accuracy is generally a worthwhile goal, whereas complete consistency is sometimes impossible. In this case, someone who runs into a mention of "flip-flop" should ideally be able to look it up on the LifeWiki and find a workable definition that matches the usage where the word appeared.

I'm just speculating here, but early uses of "flip-flop" (maybe on LIFELINE or by Conway Himself, I haven't gone back and looked) might have meant just any p2 oscillator, when relatively few p2s were known. But a decade or two later, the use of "flip-flop" evolved to refer to p2-oscillator-plus-some-extra-criterion. All of these conflicting definitions have been used, and there isn't just one "correct" one so it's best if they're all documented. Dvgrn (talk)