The game of life is a computer simulation created by John Conway, featuring small but intricate moving squares – a programmatic simulation known as cellular automata, or the Game of Life as John Conway has called it.
Before we dive into it, what’s intriguing about this game is that you can’t help but feel that it parallels life on Earth in some ways, as we see emergent entities arise from extremely simple building blocks.
Links to Try Cellular Automata game of life:
best simulation: https://copy.sh/life/
Other game of life simulations:
https://www.dcode.fr/game-of-life
https://youtu.be/oz-x7e5W0dw
About Cellular Automata
There are infinitely many combinations for how the game grows and progresses – in fact, its not really a game at all – It’s technically a zero player game, which means that the game’s evolution is determined by its initial state with no further input.
Although the game maintains such simple rules, unimaginable levels of complexity can result.
Gliders are a crazy phenomena in the game. They move forever – infinitely in one direction.
These tiny blocks move in unpredictable patterns that can only be understood by letting the simulation play out. But every process in the simulation follows the rules of the system.
Could it be that these incredibly simple rules seem almost analogous to the rules governing how protons, neutrons, and electrons interact in our own universe?
In the game, small building blocks create larger multi-functioning entities that can achieve unique and surprising tasks. Similarly, our universe has atoms which create molecules which combine to form entities that we call “life”.
In some ways, the game of life feels like a system similar to that of our own world – in which the laws of physics govern the way particles interact at an atomic level within our universe.
Game of life cellular automata: rules of the game
1. Each square is a cell.
2. Cells Have two possible states: either on or off, Alive or Dead
3. Cells fluctuate between alive and dead based on their interaction with the 8 neighboring cells.
4. Cells are born if there are exactly 3 live neighboring cells.
5. Cells die if they have fewer than 2 live neighbors or more than 3 live neighbors.
6. Cells survive if they have exactly 2 or 3 live neighbors.
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