A problem with Conway’s Game of LIfe is that it is very hard to defend yourself against attack from the rest of the game board. You can put out an eater barrier, but those things aren’t impermiable, and you have to take it down if you want to expand. So, most self-reproducing creatures in an otherwise random GOL field might find themselves shot to pieces—and quickly disintegrate.
You can put out an eater barrier, but those things aren’t impermiable
Do we have a proof for that? Or a reason to have high confidence that such a thing is not possible? How about preemptive strikes? That is, an expanding field that obliterates all dangerous things it its path.
I found it a funny thought experiment to imagine that this conversation happens between Game of Life agents discussing the Standard Model. The kind of fool-proof defenses you are discussing might be impossible in our world, too. But according to this analogy, it might be possible in the Game of Life world that after a tumultuous initial period, the world becomes a safer place, and agents with 99.9% effective defenses emerge.
Eater barriers only ever really defend against a few types of collision. That’s just a function of how eaters work—they only ever eat a small subset of things that can be projected at them.
I don’t think anyone has ever created an impermeable wall in the GOL. I am pretty sure that such a thing is impossible—though AFAIK, that has never been proved.
A problem with Conway’s Game of LIfe is that it is very hard to defend yourself against attack from the rest of the game board. You can put out an eater barrier, but those things aren’t impermiable, and you have to take it down if you want to expand. So, most self-reproducing creatures in an otherwise random GOL field might find themselves shot to pieces—and quickly disintegrate.
Do we have a proof for that? Or a reason to have high confidence that such a thing is not possible? How about preemptive strikes? That is, an expanding field that obliterates all dangerous things it its path.
I found it a funny thought experiment to imagine that this conversation happens between Game of Life agents discussing the Standard Model. The kind of fool-proof defenses you are discussing might be impossible in our world, too. But according to this analogy, it might be possible in the Game of Life world that after a tumultuous initial period, the world becomes a safer place, and agents with 99.9% effective defenses emerge.
Eater barriers only ever really defend against a few types of collision. That’s just a function of how eaters work—they only ever eat a small subset of things that can be projected at them.
I don’t think anyone has ever created an impermeable wall in the GOL. I am pretty sure that such a thing is impossible—though AFAIK, that has never been proved.