I think you could allow non-local influences if you wanted, although if you define cellular automaton in a certain way it would no longer count as one.
As for the first, I think that assuming you take MWI rather than Collapse theories our universe can be computed backwards at the bottom level (if you take Collapse then you run into other problems, since life is both deterministic and local whereas collapse isn’t).
For the record, I did not co-develop life (it pre-dates my birth by several decades), and I did not intend to imply that I had.
I think you could allow non-local influences if you wanted, although if you define cellular automaton in a certain way it would no longer count as one.
As for the first, I think that assuming you take MWI rather than Collapse theories our universe can be computed backwards at the bottom level (if you take Collapse then you run into other problems, since life is both deterministic and local whereas collapse isn’t).
For the record, I did not co-develop life (it pre-dates my birth by several decades), and I did not intend to imply that I had.