Talk:Zone of influence
Why the clip'd corners? It's obviously possible for a single cell to send a lightspeed diagonal signal.
**... **... *.x.. *.x.. ...*. ...*. ....# .....
3-fuse vs. 2-fuse: the "x" cell will be on in gen. 2 iff the "#" cell is present.
**.. **.. *x.. *x.. ..** ..** ..*# ..*.
Beacon vs. beacon sans corner: the "x" cell will be off in gen. 2 iff the "#" cell is present.
**.. **.. *:.. *:.. ...* ...* ..*# ..*.
Beacon vs. beacon sans corner, take 2: the ":" cell will be off in gen. 2 iff the "#" cell is present.
Can't bother to cook up an off > on example, but these should suffice for the point.
Now the diagonal expansion into vacuum rate limit in non-B1 rules is c/2, but that isn't what this article would seem to be about…
--Tropylium 16:57, 19 June 2011 (CDT)
- The definition in this page is taken from the Game of Life dictionary. I've created a thread here so that hopefully someone can shed some light on it. Nathaniel 15:43, 21 June 2011 (CDT)
- I remember bringing up the single-cell lightspeed influence problem in an email to Heinrich Koenig way back (April 2005). It sounded as if the term should have a footnote about it being only applicable to period-2 oscillators:
HK, 9 April 2005: "Zone of Influence":
This is based on my studying of P2 oscillators, and may be more specific to that than I thought. In my playing around with them,it seems obvious that the corner has no influence over the "shape" of oscillators... The way I think of it is that each cell has multiple paths from the center cell to every cell within the zone. Every cell in the zone of Order 2 has at least 2 such paths. The corners have only one possible, the exact diagonal. You get Order 3 by applying Order 2 to the outer edge cells. Now I haven't put as much time into P3 oscillators, so I'm not sure if the corners should be clipped as shown, or only the actual corners.
HK, 20 April 2005: I'll have to look at that "zipper" [Jason Summers' diagonal lightspeed signal demo] to understand what's going on, but it does seem that I should restrict my "zone of influence" to small period oscillators or bound objects. Or something.
So it seems like we can safely say that it's not safe to take the definition of "Zone of Influence" verbatim from Koenig's web pages -- it's an incompletely specified definition, and needs some caveats added, maybe something as strong as "this term has never been defined clearly, and is not considered to be generally useful". Dvgrn (talk) 00:32, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
- Do we want to show HK's def and such as this page does now, then disclaim it? Or would it be better to rewrite the article to say the term appeared in HK's dictionary in 2005 with a def that got copied in various places but it "has never been defined clearly, and is not considered to be generally useful" along with a ref to this post for those who want details? Book (talk) 00:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
- Would it be a sensible idea to widen the scope of this page, so that it covers different possible ways for something to influence something else and existing known limits on interactions depending on the context? The current definition could then be put in its intended context where it actually becomes useful. That might be somewhat better than giving a definition only to say that it is not considered to be generally useful. Confocal (talk) 17:48, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
- I think the page should be deleted entirely. The expected definition (not the one on the page) is just the Moore neighborhood. HotdogPi (talk) 17:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
- "Zone of influence" has gotten enough attention over the years that I'd much rather keep the article with a disclaimer. If we delete it, then HK's website and various old online copies of the Life Lexicon that don't have a disclaimer, will be the only sources of information available. Dvgrn (talk) 14:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
- I think the page should be deleted entirely. The expected definition (not the one on the page) is just the Moore neighborhood. HotdogPi (talk) 17:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Unrelated, please explain
This edit added a link to speed booster to see also, which I do not understand. GUYTU6J (talk) 15:14, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
- Note that the same edit also added a link to Speed of light. AFAICT "See also" links can be quite useful for a casual reader who has no definite target to search for, and may not have enough knowledge and/or resources to find interesting information. It seems reasonable to assume that a casual reader reading Zone of influence might happen to be interested in the general idea of some cell or pattern exerting an influence on something, and on existing known limits on that influence. The same goes for a casual reader reading Speed booster. Confocal (talk) 15:36, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
- "The general idea of some cell or pattern exerting an influence on something" is a very broad idea (that fits better with descriptions of perturb and hassle), and "existing known limits on that influence" is explained with the concept of speed of light. So what exactly does the specific speed booster have to do with zone of influence? GUYTU6J (talk) 15:49, 5 January 2023 (UTC)