transition akinator

[tommyaweosme]

to mourn the loss of another thread, i have recreated it OCA_wise!

today, i will be guessing what isotransition you want me to guess. i will ask a few questions until i get it. also, i dont mean b/s conditions, i mean the transitions. b4e and s4e are all 4e.

my first question is:
does it include two orthogonal cells right next to eachother?

include your answer, and a unique id number for your specifict transition.

#0 is taken up for the example, which goes:

Code: Select all

tommyaweosme: does it include two orthogonal cells right next to eachother?
person: #0 no
tommyaweosme: #0 is it 3 cells or less?
person: #0 yes
tommyaweosme: #0 is all the cells on one side?
person: #0 yes
tommyaweosme: #0 does it have 3 cells?
person: #0 no
tommyaweosme: #0 is it impossible to stabilize a rule with this in its birth conditions?
person: #0 no
tommyaweosme: #0 does it have 2 cells?
person: #0 yes
tommyaweosme: #0 is it 2c?
person: #0 yes
tommyaweosme: YAY!

[rutabaga]

#1

I've thought of one, and the answer to your first question is Yes

[hotcrystal0]

Let me participate. Is it less than 4 neighbors?

[rutabaga]

Yes, it is

[hotcrystal0]

Yes, it is

Does the transition have any diagonal cells?

[rutabaga]

The answer is also yes.

[CARuler]

does have 3 cells

[rutabaga]

Indeed it does

[hotcrystal0]

Is it 3a?

[rutabaga]

Nope.

[CARuler]

is it 3j

[rutabaga]

Also nope.

[CARuler]

does it fit within the bounds of 4a

[Haycat2009]

After this, can I create challenge for them to guess?

[islptng]

The transition must be 3k, as it's neither 3a nor 3j.

I'll set up 5 (#2-#6) for you to guess, and I'll PM someone for #2-5.
#6 decision for the first one to guess my #2-5.

You can ask the same question for multiple transitions in one post, so that the game will be faster.
Hint: #2 has 4 neighbors. #3 includes 2k.

EDIT:
Yes, full of mistakes.
This is condition, not transition.
Also, isn't b4e a transition?

[confocaloid]

[...] b4e and s4e are all 4e. [...]

Neither of "B4e", "S4e", "4e" is a transition.

The game itself, and many of the replies in the thread, are either technically incorrect or too vague to interpret.

Crossposting from another akinator thread:

A reason why these threads are problematic was already explained in an earlier thread which got locked. You end up with a thread that looks and feels like a pointless chat, not evolving into some productive discussion and not contributing to understanding.

Hello! Welcome to the akinator thread, where I'll be guessing your character! I can't take many people's guesses at the same time, so wait till I've guessed a persons.

I feel that this is a game better suited to a chat service, rather than a forum. I don't see a good way to limit this to something easily moderated or keep it topical, so I'm unfortunately going to have to lock it. Sorry. I will probably delete the topic in a few days.

On top of that, there are other issues that are probably worth stating, before this gets locked/deleted for some reason or another:

1. Either technically incorrect, or vague (ambiguous, unclear) wording in almost all replies I read so far.
   E.g. what you mean by "the rule has/does not have 2 diagonally adjacent state-2 cells"? Can one of those cells be the current state of the middle cell, or only neighbours count? Should these two cells be both diagonally adjacent to the middle cell, or they need to be adjacent to each other, or something else entirely?

[...]

[dvgrn]

Also, isn't b4e a transition?

confocaloid is a member of a group of people who have strongly objected to the use of the word "transition" to refer to "b4e" (or to any other elementary components of isotropic rule strings). As I understand it, they want to reserve "transition" to mean just the 0->0, 0->1, 1->0, 1->1 part -- the "b" in this case -- without the appended condition.

(Everyone is in pretty good agreement that it's okay to use "condition" to refer to something like "4e", I think.)

Now, the LifeWiki contains dozens of uses of "transition" that refer to isotropic bits such as "b4e", and forum posts contain many hundreds more. My opinion is that it's perfectly okay to continue calling "b4e" a transition, exactly as other people have been doing for many years now.

More links if you want them ...
In case anyone isn't aware of the long back story related to this question --

A while back I added a definition to the LifeWiki that explains the elementary-unit-of-rule-definition sense of "transition". It still seems to me to be a completely valid technical extension of the term, and a highly useful one. There seems to be a significant amount of support for that opinion in the community. Certainly there's been no sign that my executive decision on that topic is in any danger of being overturned.

In any case, "transition" is in such common use by so many people in this community, that I'm almost certain that it's about ten years too late to get the cat back into the bag, or the worms back into the can, or whatever metaphor you might want to use. So the LifeWiki is doing its job here by documenting existing terminology.

EDIT: See confocaloid's response below. It seems best to avoid having this whole debate here all over again; for example, I've already responded here to the claim that "b3a" should be called a "transition rule" and not a "transition".

[confocaloid]

Also, isn't b4e a transition?

confocaloid is a member of a group of people who have strongly objected to the use of the word "transition" to refer to "b4e" (or to any other elementary components of isotropic rule strings). As I understand it, they want to reserve "transition" to mean just the 0->0, 0->1, 1->0, 1->1 part -- the "b" in this case -- without the appended condition.
[...]

There is an old distinction between

• conditions on the current generation, telling something about current states of the cell and/or its neighbours;
• state-to-state transitions (a cell that was in state X "transitions into" a state Y);
• "if-then" type rules that prescribe "such-and-such state-to-state transition happens whenever such-and-such condition is met".

This distinction is not invented on these forums.
The terminology is also old and well-known, and can be found online and offline in existing sources.
I already provided multiple links and quotes, to sources where people actually spent some efforts trying to explain things.

[...] So the LifeWiki is doing its job here by documenting existing terminology.

This claim is incorrect. The primary task of LifeWiki is to document the existing knowledge about CGoL and related cellular automata.

Terminology referring to ideas/concepts is merely used to explain existing knowledge, but it's secondary to the knowledge itself.
Therefore, terminology should be correct, clear and intuitively understandable as far as possible at all.

How commonly some word or phrase is currently used on the forums is largely irrelevant.

[rutabaga]

The transition must be 3k, as it's neither 3a nor 3j.

I'll set up 5 (#2-#6) for you to guess, and I'll PM someone for #2-5.
#6 decision for the first one to guess my #2-5.

You can ask the same question for multiple transitions in one post, so that the game will be faster.
Hint: #2 has 4 neighbors. #3 includes 2k.

EDIT:
Yes, full of mistakes.
This is condition, not transition.
Also, isn't b4e a transition?

My transition was 3q, sorry for not answering because I didn't understand CARuler's question. My question is, does #2 have 1-2 diagonal cells?

[confocaloid]

"3q" by itself doesn't denote any transition, and doesn't even imply any specific transition.
It just tells a certain condition on the current states of neighbours of a cell (while failing to say anything at all about the middle cell).

[CARuler]

The transition must be 3k, as it's neither 3a nor 3j.

I'll set up 5 (#2-#6) for you to guess, and I'll PM someone for #2-5.
#6 decision for the first one to guess my #2-5.

You can ask the same question for multiple transitions in one post, so that the game will be faster.
Hint: #2 has 4 neighbors. #3 includes 2k.

EDIT:
Yes, full of mistakes.
This is condition, not transition.
Also, isn't b4e a transition?

My transition was 3q, sorry for not answering because I didn't understand CARuler's question. My question is, does #2 have 1-2 diagonal cells?

Just ask next time I meant overlap 4a with without Any cells being outside

[confocaloid]

does it fit within the bounds of 4a

Just ask next time I meant overlap 4a with without Any cells being outside

I think this is still ambiguous.

Here is what "4a" by itself actually means (up to rotations and reflections):

Code: Select all

#C LifeHistory state 3 denotes "specified ON"
#C LifeHistory state 4 denotes "specified OFF"
#C LifeHistory state 2 denotes "unspecified"
#C LifeHistory state 0 denotes "falls outside the Moore neighbourhood of the cell"
x = 3, y = 3, rule = LifeHistory
3C$CBD$3D!
#C [[ GRID VIEWONLY ]]

Note that "4a" only tells something about the current states of the 8 neighbours of the cell (specifically, it must be one of 8 orientations of the above).
Whether the middle cell is currently alive or dead is unknown (unspecified).
What the rules prescribe in this case (i.e. the future state of the middle cell) is also unspecified. The rules might be B/S012345678, or B3/S23, or B2/S, or whatever.

Now, what exactly you mean by "the bounds of 4a"? Do you mean the bounding box of the four "specified ON" cells, or the bounding box of all specified cells, or something else?
What it means "overlap 4a with without Any cells being outside"? Outside of what? Any cells, or just specified ON cells, or any specified cells?

These kinds of vagueness/ambiguity undermine possibility of a productive discussion, and also undermine possibility of an interesting game.

[hotdogPi]

"Does it fit within the bounds of 4a" seems unambiguous to me, namely, is it a subset (including 4a itself).

[confocaloid]

"Does it fit within the bounds of 4a" seems unambiguous to me, namely, is it a subset (including 4a itself).

For clarity:
(1) does it still count if it specifies more? (E.g. does "B4a" or "S4a" count?)
(2) does it still count if it specifies less? (E.g. does "4" count?)
(3) does it suffice that _some_ orientation has "specified ON" cells as a subset of "specified ON" cells of some orientation of "4a", or there are added restrictions on the orientations?

There may be further complications hidden behind the ambiguities.

[hotdogPi]

"Does it fit within the bounds of 4a" seems unambiguous to me, namely, is it a subset (including 4a itself).

For clarity:
(1) does it still count if it specifies more? (E.g. does "B4a" or "S4a" count?)
(2) does it still count if it specifies less? (E.g. does "4" count?)
(3) does it suffice that _some_ orientation has "specified ON" cells as a subset of "specified ON" cells of some orientation of "4a", or there are added restrictions on the orientations?

There may be further complications hidden behind the ambiguities.

The first two questions aren't relevant to this game, as the rules say that guesses don't distinguish between birth and survival, and "4" isn't a valid guess.

For the third one, I would say yes. This game only lists e.g. "4a", not "top left, top middle, top right, left middle".