What it means for something to be "known"?

[confocaloid]

What it means for a reaction, a pattern, a ruleset, a CA-related concept to be "known"? Should there be a written explanation or an overview somewhere, aiming to answer this question?
(Could there be a written explanation or an overview, or the idea is self-contradictory or otherwise doomed?)

Sometimes people ask "Is this known?" Sometimes people say something along the lines of "that's a trivial oscillator", "there are too many reactions of this type to list all known reactions", or "this reaction is a variant of that known reaction". Sometimes that leads to discussions and/or arguments; other times that leads to loss of curiosity (because they say it's known/trivial/etc).

There are tricky cases, e.g. finding a previously unknown and unexpected way to connect two previously known conduits via some nontrivial modification or welding, or finding a more compact pattern where some block catalyst is shared between two components, or any other unexpected way to get previously known things involved, or what have you.

Lots of "new things" are built out of "old things", but this doesn't really give a good overview which could be reasonably linked to, which leads to the above questions.

[tommyaweosme]

the fite reaction was found in an old life newspaper, but it wasnt really "known" until i brought it up. does that help?

[hotdogPi]

Sometimes it's a judgment call. Are these equivalent or not?

Code: Select all

x = 78, y = 26, rule = B3/S23
13bo9bo50bo$13b3o5b3o48b3o$16bo3bo50bo$15b2o3b2o49b2o2$17b3o31b2o6b2o
7b3o5bo$16bo3bo29bo2bo4bo2bo5bo3bo3bobo$15bo5bo27b6o2b6o3bo5bo3bo$o2bo
b2obo2bo3bo5bo3bo2bob2obo2bo13bo2bo4bo2bo4bo5bo$4ob2ob4o3bo5bo3b4ob2ob
4o14b2o6b2o5bo5bo$o2bob2obo2bo4bo3bo4bo2bob2obo2bo30bo3bo$17b3o48b3o$
73b3o$66b2o5b3o$14b5o48bo6bo$10b2obo5bo44b3o7bo$10bob2o5b3o42bo9bo$22b
o50bobo$11b4obob3obo$10bo4b3o3bo$11b3o5bo53bobo$13bobobob2o53bo$14bo2b
obo54bo$15b2o2bo54bo$19b2o52b3o$73b3o!