John Conway: Inventing The Game of Life - von Neumann, Mars colonization, and Martin Gardner

[bananas]

Inventing Game of Life - Numberphile
Published on Mar 5, 2014

John H Conway on the creation of his Game of Life.

Including the indirect roles of John von Neumann and Martin Gardner.

Website: http://www.numberphile.com/

Numberphile is supported by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI): http://bit.ly/MSRINumberphile

[bananas]

1. Does John Conway hate his Game of Life?

Published on Mar 3, 2014

John H Conway on his love/hate relationship with his most "famous" invention.

Videos by Brady Haran

A run-down of Brady's channels: http://bit.ly/bradychannels

[bananas]

2. Hashlife and Golly

From the comments:

Ralph H. via Google+ 1 month ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife <- this you do not believe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golly_%28program%29 <- unless you see this 

[eggplant]

3. I met him once at a reception party for a conference I went to in Boston

it was at the Children's Museum (I think). Everyone was nicely dressed, and in comes this older guy with a scraggly beard, sandals, fluorescent orange running shorts and a dirty Princeton t-shirt. It would have been easy to mistake him for a vagrant. I had to ask someone "who is that?" and they replied "that's John Conway, he invented the game of life!"

So I wandered over to see what was happening. A group of attendees had gathered around him as he did mathematical parlor tricks. One of them was where we went around the circle and gave him a date in history (say, one's birthdate) and he would instantly reply with what day of the week that was, and what the phase of the moon was on that date. As he went, he started going faster and faster around until he got to me and I said "today" -- and he stopped dead in his tracks for a moment, had a laugh, and then continued on around the group.

[tclambert]

4. He's wrong about it not influencing other thinking.

It began the study of cellular automata, and to some extent, simulation games. All the more complex simulations of life, communities, or worlds trace back to this ultra-simple beginning. And you can hardly discuss the subject of emergent phenomena without mentioning the game of life. And you can hardly mention evolution without this simple example of apparent design and organization arising without a designer.

Researchers have made many discoveries within the Game of Life over the years, as well. Starting with patterns of infinite growth (a glider gun was the first). Various long-lived "Methuselah" patterns were found. Then it was proven you could theoretically do computations with the game. Then they found patterns that could create copies of themselves.

Several variations on the game have been invented, as well. They even came up with a kind of notation for the rules. The standard game is B3/S23, which means a new "cell" is born if an empty square has 3 "live" neighbors, and a "live" cell "survives" if it has 2 or 3 "live" neighbors. One called Highlife has a B36/S23 rule set, where a birth can also result when an empty square has 6 live neighbors. And some variations alter the geometry, for example replacing the square grid pattern with hexagonal cells.

Check this out:

[navarth]

5. Goddam it

You have got me TOTALLY hooked on the numberphile channel.

Thank you.