I disagree with your final point, that it is unlikely that it would be possible to get information other than “something occurred at around a specific area;” however I agree with your other points.
A detailed computer is likely to be very unstable. Even if it could collect lots of information about the environment reliably at a distance, it would not be able to retrieve or utilize that information quickly.
In a large enough board, however, we would expect to see a computer that was essentially isolated except for a few small stable patterns which it would be able to interact with via radar.
Presumably a sufficiently intelligent AI would be able to better configure the patterns of life, perhaps using some kind of protective membrane.
However the chance of creating a life board of such a size and with such a distribution that one would expect to see ONE such AI and not a thousand or more (which would likely have different goals and levels of intelligence) would mean that rather than expecting to see one type of complex computation take over the board, I might expect that in the limit (i.e. in a 3^^^3 board; after about 3^^^3! time steps) to see extended wars between the most intelligent AIs.
Unless it turns out that there is an unstoppable self-propagating “virus” in the game of life, which would be a somewhat depressing thing to learn!
There is another cellular automaton called the Cyclic Cellular Automaton (warning: Java applet). There, these viruses emerge naturally, without any effort. They are called daemons. When several of them meet, a pretty pattern emerges. I always use these to help visualize agents burning the cosmic commons with the speed of light,
I disagree with your final point, that it is unlikely that it would be possible to get information other than “something occurred at around a specific area;” however I agree with your other points.
A detailed computer is likely to be very unstable. Even if it could collect lots of information about the environment reliably at a distance, it would not be able to retrieve or utilize that information quickly.
In a large enough board, however, we would expect to see a computer that was essentially isolated except for a few small stable patterns which it would be able to interact with via radar.
Presumably a sufficiently intelligent AI would be able to better configure the patterns of life, perhaps using some kind of protective membrane.
However the chance of creating a life board of such a size and with such a distribution that one would expect to see ONE such AI and not a thousand or more (which would likely have different goals and levels of intelligence) would mean that rather than expecting to see one type of complex computation take over the board, I might expect that in the limit (i.e. in a 3^^^3 board; after about 3^^^3! time steps) to see extended wars between the most intelligent AIs.
Unless it turns out that there is an unstoppable self-propagating “virus” in the game of life, which would be a somewhat depressing thing to learn!
What happens when two copies of the virus meet?
There is another cellular automaton called the Cyclic Cellular Automaton (warning: Java applet). There, these viruses emerge naturally, without any effort. They are called daemons. When several of them meet, a pretty pattern emerges. I always use these to help visualize agents burning the cosmic commons with the speed of light,
They high five then continue on? I don’t really know enough about the game to say.