Let's get philosophical.

[v00d00]

Hello guys. I want to start a somewhat different thread. Because there tend to be a philosophical background within the game of life (starting by the very name) but there are other analogies with our world as well. I keep finding more and more.
Anyway, share your philosophical thoughts on the game on life or Cellular Automata generally.
I'll start:
I was gonna talk about how I believe the universe is some sort of gigantic, non-discrete (or continuous), fractally dimensional, utterly complex floating point cellular automata, and how perhaps living organisms are combinations of this automata like there are breeders, puffers, etc in GoL.
But I'll leave that because I found this other analogy. More similar to WireWorld and Von Neumann's automata actually, in that information is passed from one cell to another thus traveling... any similarities with culture, society, humanity?
Of course we are not fixed cells, we move around, but the several personality types and our social circles can be thought of in a simialr way tot the JvN CA. Some of us just transmit information as we receive it, some can transmit it in several directions, and some gather it and output a product of all the inputs. Some transform it in a new kind of information, say, perspective, and some even refute or block the info. This in a huge, very complex system called... yeah, you guessed, culture, do you happen to lvie in one?
So I keep finding more and more things like this, in which cellular automata seem to have some relationship with the real world. Oh my oh my

[Extrementhusiast]

Each cell is really one Planck length wide, and each timestep is really one Planck time long. (If you don't know what those are, go refresh yourself on some quantum mechanics.)

[mniemiec]

Each cell is really one Planck length wide, and each timestep is really one Planck time long. (If you don't know what those are, go refresh yourself on some quantum mechanics.)

One problem with this model is that the physical world has infinite dimensional symmetry, while CAs are symmetrical only along lattice axes. One could approximate this by having a cell size much smaller than the Planck length and having rules with large neighborhoods that allow gliders to move in many directions. (Perhaps by only using constructor-based spaceships, but then the question remains - how does one suppress all smaller (and more numerous) spaceships that move along discrete grid lines?)

[lukebradford]

I'm curious what you mean by "floating point", could you elaborate on that? I'm familiar with the CS definition of the term, but that doesn't seem to apply here.

[towerator]

Actually, if a cell is 1 planck lenght long, "dimenson" doesn't mean much things for it.
Note that CAs disrespect thermodynamics, but maybe... if we zoom off...

P.S. There are some similities between gliders and neutrinos.

[v00d00]

I'm curious what you mean by "floating point", could you elaborate on that? I'm familiar with the CS definition of the term, but that doesn't seem to apply here.

I was thinking aobut something like smooth life
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blo ... ooth-life/
But I too believe the universe to be fractally dimensional, insteas of discretely dimensional. Something like a Cantor Dust wit more dimensions.
I don't know if I mae myself clear, to be honest, I am just approximating a thought

[NickGotts]

The philosopher Dan Dennett makes use of Game of Life in at least two of his books: Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Freedom Evolves. Both highly recommended.

An interesting science fiction use of CA (not the Game of Life specifically) occurs in The Gameplayers of Zan by M.A. Foster. The Ler, a new kind of human resulting from a biotechnology experiment, and confined to a small reservation, play a CA-derived game, which is an important part of their culture. Why they do so is revealed in the denoument.