What is the game of life?
Recently I was listening to the Joe Rogan Experience, and was fascinated by a conversation between the host, Joe Rogan and guest Lex Friedman. Friedman is an Artificial Intelligence research scientist working on autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and machine learning at MIT.
Before listening to the conversation I had never heard of Conway’s Game of Life, but the title alone intrigued me, leaving me with some pretty serious questions. Who is Conway? And what on earth is his Game of Life?
John Horton Conway was a British mathematician whose work contributed to many different fields of mathematics. These include, but are not limited to finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. Most notably he created a game called “Conway’s Game of Life”.
Now before I lose some of you completely, maths has never been a strong point with me, and most of these theories fly completely over my head. Despite this, Conway’s Game of Life still fascinates me and I know that it will fascinate you too. So please bare with me as this theory could have some very interesting implications for us as a species.
Developed in 1970, Conway’s Game of Life is a Zero-Player game. This means that you as the player make one initial move at the start of the game and the rest of the interactions occur automatically. The game runs off a set of simple rules:
Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
These rules can then be compared with and condensed into the following:
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives.
Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell.
All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead.
After the initial pattern is created by the user, the program applies the rules creating the first generation of cells. After this, the program automatically applies the rules to the next generation of cells. Each reproduced cell has no idea of what the previous cells have done, it just applies the same set of rules.
Things become interesting as you observe generations of cells living and dying. As you watch from above, distinct patterns begin to emerge and appear to animate. It almost looks as though the patterns created by the cells are alive. Different initial patterns create different forms of shapes from cells, which then act differently to each other. There are three main groups of shapes. Still Lifes, Oscillators and Spaceships.
“Many patterns in the Game of Life eventually become a combination of Still Lifes, Oscillators, and Spaceships; other patterns may be called chaotic. A pattern may stay chaotic for a very long time until it eventually settles to such a combination.” The same thing applies with the second law of thermal dynamics: Everything becomes more chaotic, with pockets of complexity.
Now that you have a basic understanding of the game, I’m sure you are wondering how this game has anything to do with humanity? The easiest way to describe this is with a simple analogy.
When a honey bee is working, it has no idea what it is doing. It is solely aware of its own individual task. Its little bee mind is blissfully unaware of the infinite complexities of creating a hive, or indeed making honey. Yet it still works until it eventually dies.
In many ways a bee acts almost identically to a cell in Conway’s Game of Life. Just like a cell, a bee has no idea of what’s going on, it is just applying a set of simple rules.
As humans we tend to busy ourselves with our own little lives. Our jobs, our friends, our families, our stuff. Even though it might not always seem like it, in reality we might be apart of something much bigger than what we can perceive from our limited perspective, just like a bee in a hive.
Now if Bees make honey, what exactly do people do? This is certainly an interesting thought. If this logic can be applied to bees creating a hive, what might us humans be creating?
I am no expert in this field, and I don’t claim to be, but if I was observing humanity as a bystander my guess is that it would probably have something to do with technology.
Especially when considering the astounding and rapid developments of AI, Quantum Computing and Brain Computer interfaces such as Neuralink. These fields are developing faster and faster leading to more advanced designs at an exponential rate.
With simple rules crazy things can become possible if you look from a different perspective. Shine enough sunlight on rock (Earth) floating through space and time, and you eventually get a iPhone.
It is amazing how many questions a simple game can create and is remarkable how much complexity can be created from simplicity, and with simple rules how much richness and beauty can arise.
In April 2020, Conway passed away at the age of 82 due to complications from COVID-19. I am grateful for him and his work for showing me a different perspective on how to look at the world.
