The question, as you quoted it, was whether we have a “good” formalism for this.
I would define “good” in this context as something like “useful for solving the problem at hand”. If you would define it simply as “elegant”, then I suppose we weren’t really disagreeing to begin with. But if you define it the same way I do, then perhaps you’ve just seen cellular automata do some way more impressive high-level things than I’ve seen them do.
The question, as you quoted it, was whether we have a “good” formalism for this.
I would define “good” in this context as something like “useful for solving the problem at hand”. If you would define it simply as “elegant”, then I suppose we weren’t really disagreeing to begin with. But if you define it the same way I do, then perhaps you’ve just seen cellular automata do some way more impressive high-level things than I’ve seen them do.
Well, the ones in question are universal—and so can do all the same things that any other parallel universal system can do without very much stress.