It’s an early example of a “world” simulated by applying simple rules to a board with grids. Black cells die, idle, or reproduce based on these rules, and it results in interesting yet predictable behavior of some clusters. Some shapes/clusters were recognized as behaving in a particular way when the “game” starts.
Fun fact - i bet you already know but for any others looking - its possible to use these shapes to create “a computer” that itself runs the game, which can run a copy within itself, which can also run a copy and so on and so on forever
Yes, the rules of Conway’s Game of Life is Turing Complete.
The glider shape (the thing moving diagonally out of the window in this meme) can be created non-destructively by a glider gun (another shape that creates gliders), which can be controlled using stored pixels in another configuration within the glider gun, including taking in input from other gliders, such that the whole thing can loop and do everything necessary to be a universal Turing machine. Not super efficiently, but it will still do the things that Turing machines can do, given enough cycles.
Conway’s Game of Life.
It’s an early example of a “world” simulated by applying simple rules to a board with grids. Black cells die, idle, or reproduce based on these rules, and it results in interesting yet predictable behavior of some clusters. Some shapes/clusters were recognized as behaving in a particular way when the “game” starts.
Fun fact - i bet you already know but for any others looking - its possible to use these shapes to create “a computer” that itself runs the game, which can run a copy within itself, which can also run a copy and so on and so on forever
Yes, the rules of Conway’s Game of Life is Turing Complete.
The glider shape (the thing moving diagonally out of the window in this meme) can be created non-destructively by a glider gun (another shape that creates gliders), which can be controlled using stored pixels in another configuration within the glider gun, including taking in input from other gliders, such that the whole thing can loop and do everything necessary to be a universal Turing machine. Not super efficiently, but it will still do the things that Turing machines can do, given enough cycles.