- a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970
- a zero-player game - its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input
- classic example of how complex phenomena can emerge from simple rules
The universe: an infinite, two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, live or dead
Neighbours: 8 neighbouring squares
The rules at each step in time:
- if cell is live:
- dies if #(neighbours) < 2
- lives if #(neighbours) = 2 or 3
- dies if #(neighbours) > 3
- if cell is dead:
- comes alive if #(neighbours) = 3
- video
- Life in Life - brings me back to wasting ram on the simulation hypothesis
The game of life is technically Turing complete, so if you have enough time and a large enough grid/enough memory, you can theoretically perform any operation on it that you can perform on any other computer. Hence, the game of life can simulate a nested game of life.