Conway's Life is a set of rules for changing whether a square is filled in or not. This particular set of rules has its own name because it produces surprisingly rich results.
One small example is the little pattern the video starts with-- after four changes, it reappears, having moved one square. It's called a glider.
The video shows a complex starting pattern which replicates the rules of life on a large scale (in this case, a row of gliders) by using the rules of life.
It's an example of how complexity emerges out of a system of simple rules. It's an analogy for how we got self-reproducing life out of pi, hydrogen, and the Planck constant.
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zvi and
no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 05:08 pm (UTC)Conway's Life is a set of rules for changing whether a square is filled in or not. This particular set of rules has its own name because it produces surprisingly rich results.
One small example is the little pattern the video starts with-- after four changes, it reappears, having moved one square. It's called a glider.
The video shows a complex starting pattern which replicates the rules of life on a large scale (in this case, a row of gliders) by using the rules of life.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 05:04 pm (UTC)