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I'm once again amazed at how "routine" this stuff seems to be. In the top solution go to the life simulator and paste in a copy of the gist and then click 'fit pattern' and run. Amazing stuff.



I've had to check the Wikipedia article on Conway's Game of Life a few times to make sure I'm remember it right: Yep, four simple rules is all it takes to describe a Universal Turing Machine.

How whacky.


Stephen Wolfram postulates that quantum mechanics and therefore all of physics and the whole universe emerge from a few simple cellular automata rules.

How truly wacky (if true)


I believe I read somewhere (Chaitin?) that what you stated implies a deterministic universe. It doesn't seem plausible.


The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is deterministic. It's one of the (many) qualities that makes it so attractive.


You don't think it's plausible that the universe is deterministic?


Why not? All the laws of physics we know of are already deterministic.


Except (maybe) all of quantum mechanics


Just because there are things we can't measure from inside this universe doesn't mean that those things aren't deterministic.


> Just because there are things we can't measure from inside this universe doesn't mean that those things aren't deterministic.

There is no reason to believe that non-local hidden variables are the reason for the probabilistic nature of QM.

Many worlds is another classic interpretation that works.


What would be the nature of those things, given that we find no correlation at all with things in this universe?

I could believe we just aren't measuring with enough precision (and perhaps, it's impossible to do so). But that's still deterministic and inside our universe.


It does if we're living in a simulation.


You can get Turing completeness in a one-dimensional cellular automaton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110




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