dumb questions that will probably never get answered (at least here)

[hotdogPi]

The questions below are to be taken seriously:

Why does the partial get 2 likes, but the complete version got zero likes??
Likes are partially a function of who notices it at the time and how long it remains the most recent post.
Why does the partial get 2 likes, but the complete version got zero likes??
See above.
Why does the partial get 2 likes, but the complete version got zero likes??
See above.
Why people resist giving a like to a post unless there's already a like on it?
Likes are given very sparingly, and seeing at least one is a reminder that "oh, this can be liked".
Why only few people bother to give likes to the average post?
This community gives out likes very sparingly, as if they were consumables (e.g. Reddit awards when they existed).
Why does some posts with many likes never get replied?
Liking is supposed to replace single-word comments saying "Nice", "Awesome", or similar. This is intentional.
Why does posts regarding opinions far easier to get likes than posts regarding patterns?
I've noticed the exact opposite. Did you check the p19 and p41 posts?
Why does the first post in threads far easier to get likes than other posts?
Because it's highly visible.
All the above states that maybe adding the "like" button on forum posts is not a good idea after all, likes are too biased...

Why does ironic-spaceship.rle and many other non-notable patterns made their way into Golly 4.3?
Notability in OCA is subjective. You may not find it notable, but others do.
Why the new multistate patterns in Golly 4.3 stop getting their rules packed with them in .zip, but instead the rules got dumped into the Rules folder?
No idea.
Why Persian Rug, Replicator, Fredkin, and Plow World got included in Golly's default named rules and consequently is 10000x more popular than even B38/S23?
Replicator and Fredkin have special properties. As for Persian Rug and Plow World, I agree they should be removed.
Why Golly made it into Wikipedia?
Because it's a very useful piece of software with features on par with programs that cost hundreds (AutoCAD, Finale, Word before it became free)?
Why there are no very good CA programs beside Golly and LifeViewer?
Why would you need to create another one if those two already work fine? Introducing others is just going to create more incompatibilities.

Also, a crosspost:

Important note: I noticed that the overall "newbieness" of this forum is rapidly rising over the past few months, to a level that this forum has never reached before. Anyone know why? (OCA forum and sandbox are affected the most.)

When 3-4 users start using the sandbox a lot, there's a positive feedback effect where they reply to each other, bumping up their post count even more.

[tommyaweosme]

for that last question,

places i go to often start getting more and more people in it. idk why.

[confocaloid]

[...] All the above states that maybe adding the "like" button on forum posts is not a good idea after all, likes are too biased... [...]

I think the issue isn't about "likes" being biased. Instead, "likes" don't represent any nontrivial unambiguous information. The only thing you know from the fact that someone "liked" your post, is that they "liked" that post at a certain point in time. Maybe they did actually read the post and understood it; maybe not. Maybe your post was edited after they "liked" it, complicating the matters.

"Likes" may well be useful for something. My point here, is that that "something" cannot be stated as "helping unambiguous communication". If you want the latter, you need to actually reply in a forum thread and explain your thoughts; merely "liking" some post(s) cannot replace discussion.

Why does ironic-spaceship.rle and many other non-notable patterns made their way into Golly 4.3?

Personally I don't see a real problem with the specific pattern you mentioned -- I think it's fine to include that pattern in the bundled collection.
I think if a newcomer sees this pattern and reads the comments to it, that's likely to make them more curious about the Life/CA field/hobby/game (and unlikely to do the opposite thing).

As for "and many other non-notable patterns", that's not specific enough to be answerable.
(I have some thoughts about notability of some other patterns, but I guess that's a topic for another day and another forum thread.)

Why Persian Rug, Replicator, Fredkin, and Plow World got included in Golly's default named rules and consequently is 10000x more popular than even B38/S23?

Because they are old named CA that got mentioned/discussed during early exploration? It's nice to have some examples of named "classic" rulesets, from different parts of the supported rulespace(s), regardless of whether or not those rulesets are currently considered "notable" or "noteworthy".

Again, personally I don't see a real problem here. I'm fine with keeping all the named CA there by default. And I do not see any particularly good reason to discard any of those names.

Why Golly made it into Wikipedia?

Why shouldn't it be there, exactly?

Maybe there's a page because the topic happened to be notable enough for Wikipedia.
Or maybe not really, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OTHERCONTENT and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OTHERSTUFF

Why there are no very good CA programs beside Golly and LifeViewer?

I disagree. There are other very good CA programs, if you relax your constraints. Tutorials/Software Category:Software
First, there is some very good software that does not fall into the category "CA editors/simulators". (E.g. search programs, scripts, databases.)
Second, there are also other CA simulators with significant effort put into them.

Also, a crosspost:

Linking to prior discussion:
viewtopic.php?p=187386#p187386
viewtopic.php?p=187387#p187387
viewtopic.php?p=187390#p187390

[tommyaweosme]

why cant we just merge lifeviewer and golly together? its bound to happen by 2100, so why not make it now?

[b-engine]

why cant we just merge lifeviewer and golly together? its bound to happen by 2100, so why not make it now?

Essentially, this merger is basically Golly but with LifeViewer GUI and supports more rulespaces. However, we may need to discard some Golly features unavailable in LifeViewer, such as the pre-supplied patterns.
Since both Golly and LifeViewer are open source, we may merge 2 source codes together, maybe with Golly's ckde converted into Javascript.
I don't have an idea of the name, through.

[confocaloid]

why cant we just merge lifeviewer and golly together? its bound to happen by 2100, so why not make it now?

[...] Since both Golly and LifeViewer are open source, we may merge 2 source codes together, [...]

Why not use ChatGPT to help with the task?

[b-engine]

ChatGPT to help with the task?

Well, I couldn't get an accurate result from ChatGPT. It doesn't know much about CA.

[tommyaweosme]

big ai has secrets...

train your own ai to give you better results

[H. H. P. M. P. Cole]

37,5. What is the obscurest known cellular automaton with a weighted neighbourhood (NW)?

I think it is probably this one (if I am understanding your question right):

Code: Select all

x = 47, y = 40, rule = R3,C2,S1,5,25,30,B10,26,50,55,NW00000001000000000000050000000000001900000001051900190501000000190000000000000500000000000001000000
26b2obo2$29b2o10$44bo2$10b2o$o$o43bo$44bo$o38b2o3bo$3bo$b4obo14b2o2$9b
o$bo7bo7$34b2o2$24bo$23bo$24b2o3bo$24b2o3bo$25b2o18b2o$31bo$33bo$25bo
3bo2bo!

Of course, one can make a CA more obscure than that, by using weights greater than +127, or by adding more neighbours, or by adding more birth/survival conditions, but I doubt that the first option will be implemented in LV or Golly any time soon...

37+3/4. Why is there no extension of the Weighted format to add larger weights than +127? One can just add more digits per weight of cell. (There might be some difficulty I had probably overlooked.)

This 'extended NW format' will technically be representing weighted neighbourhoods like this:

(in decimal):

Code: Select all

0001 0005 0045 0005 0001
0005 0225 1125 0225 0005
0045 1125 0000 1125 0045
0005 0225 1125 0225 0005
0001 0005 0045 0005 0001

and should be infinitely extensible, ideally.

[tommyaweosme]

38. whats wrong with 38?

[confocaloid]

[...]
37+3/4. Why is there no extension of the Weighted format to add larger weights than +127? One can just add more digits per weight of cell. (There might be some difficulty I had probably overlooked.)
[...]

Indeed it would be relatively straightforward to extend the weighted neighbourhoods syntax to allow n digits per weight of cell (n = 1, 2, 3, 4, ...)
The number of distinguishable conditions would become very high. A consequence would be that many rulestrings would get extremely long. (That may or may not be a problem, though)

For example, with four hexadecimal digits per cell weight, it would be possible to have hexadecimal weights 0001, 0002, 0004, 0008, 0010, 0020, 0040, 0080, 0100, 0200, 0400, 0800, assigned to 12 different neighbours (each weight assigned to exactly one neighbour cell). Then it would be possible to refer to every possible configuration in those 12 cells, distinguishing it from all other possible configurations; there would be 2^12 = 4096 possibilities for the current states of neighbours of the cell, multiplied by 2 possibilities for the current state of the cell itself. That would lead to a space with 2^13 = 8192 fully-specified living conditions, each of which would be individually toggleable.

Now imagine writing a rulestring with multiple ranges of birth conditions and multiple ranges of survival conditions, something that would look like this:

Code: Select all

R2,C0,S1-2,4-5,7-8,10-12,14-16,18-20,(trimmed for brevity),4080-4085,4090-4095,B1-2,4-5,7-8,10-12,14-16,18-20,(trimmed for brevity),4080-4085,4090-4095,NW0000000000010000000000000002000400080000001000200000004000800000010002000400000000000000080000000000

38. whats wrong with 38?

In this thread, there were questions numbered 35 and 36; then there was some strange post that apparently wasn't a CA-related question, and wasn't a numbered question, either. I was not sure whether that post was meant to be numbered 37 or not, and so I decided to assign the number 37,5 to my post.
Other than that, as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with the number 38.

[haaaaaands]

why do most trackers number pattern rows in hexadecimal instead of decimal?

[b-engine]

why do most trackers number pattern rows in hexadecimal instead of decimal?

Hexadecimal is easier than decimal when you're working on a binary device.

[tommyaweosme]

what about trinary

[b-engine]

what about trinary

There're only a few rules that directly supports any N-nary. Making computers not using binary is hard.

[tommyaweosme]

but trinary stores 58% more info! and life can achieve it! (lwss and mwss)! and other things too like two-signal wireworld!

[b-engine]

but trinary stores 58% more info! and life can achieve it! (lwss and mwss)! and other things too like two-signal wireworld!

What about rules like Flow6 and original WireWorld/Bliptile?
It's technically possible to directly implement trinarial computer in B-Univ via colored signals, but I'm not going to do that.

(My 1800th post is going to come with a wire rule with 3-state signals. If I post 2000 posts every year, I'll break the forums record after 5 or 6 years, ignoring tommy.)

[tommyaweosme]

my post growth will grow and grow and no one will stop me. i will break the forum records like i already (probably) have (200 posts per month gets me to 2400 posts per year. i already have exactly 900 posts and it hasnt even been six months)

[haaaaaands]

my post growth will grow and grow and no one will stop me. i will break the forum records like i already (probably) have (200 posts per month gets me to 2400 posts per year. i already have exactly 900 posts and it hasnt even been six months)

*905

[tommyaweosme]

thanks for providing outdated up-to-date information. you dont need to because that was my 900th post

[confocaloid]

42. Neither of three preceding posts in this forum thread was either a dumb question or an improbable answer to a dumb question. Why?

[tommyaweosme]

bee cause

[tommyaweosme]

at this rate, i will get 1000 posts at june 29 or 30

[tommyaweosme]

do you think scp-999 does life?

[haaaaaands]

do you think scp-999 does life?

w h u t

uhm

whatever
why not add a dark mode or something like that to conwaylife.com?