ConwayLife.com

hello, I made this account just to ask this.

seeing as the 0E0P metacell can simulate any rule, couldn't it simulate a B36/S23 replicator, and as such making it a "true" replicator in Life?

the answer is probably no, because otherwise this seems like a huge oversight, so what am I missing here?

Welcome to the forums!

Techincally, replicators are supposed to be elementary, but I see that this is possible, though. Good idea, at least...

Keep in mind that running one tick (one generation) in 0E0P took 2 months, realtime, using an optimization of Hashlife called Streamlife.

Indeed, the HighLife replicator simulated by 0E0P would count as a true replicator in Life, albeit an extremely slow and hard-to-simulate one. A replicator doesn't necessarily have to be elementary. You could also create a quadratic replicator such as this one:

Ian07 wrote:Indeed, the HighLife replicator simulated by 0E0P would count as a true replicator in Life, albeit an extremely slow and hard-to-simulate one. A replicator doesn't necessarily have to be elementary. You could also create a quadratic replicator such as this one:

Code: Select all

x = 1, y = 1, rule = B1357/S1357
o!

Or just program it for a rule similar to B123/S12345678, and you get the replication without the XOR weirdness where the population keeps dropping back down to 4 or 8 or 9, at increasing intervals.

The metacell's ability to function as (various kinds of) replicator is not really an oversight, just probably not well enough advertised in the stub 0E0P LifeWiki article, or anywhere else yet. The original introductory article by calcyman was titled "Fully self-directed replication", and it describes the 0E0P as follows:

Suitably programmed, this is a parity-rule replicator, and a loop-like replicator, and a universal constructor. It is also the first unbounded-fecundity replicator in Conway’s 2-state cellular automaton.

The ability to "import" exotic patterns such as replicators or RROs to CGoL was always seen as one of the 0E0P's main features, and its main advantage over other metacells (which cannot function in an empty universe); it's even in the blurb I made for it in the POTY 2018 competition.