Requirements:
- do everything a Turing machine can do!
- conditional branching
- must have sufficient amount of memory
"The ability to read and write a pattern of 0s and 1s is powerful enough to compute anything that CAN be computed."
-- Computerphile, Professor Brailsford
- considered Type-0 Grammar/language (Recursively enumerable) in Chomsky's heirarchy of languages
- realized that to perform any computation, must have conditional branching
- which implicitly implies "
go to..." that various information needs to be stored. If Here, go there, else, go here...
- which implicitly implies "
- program that operates in 2d grid
- simple set of rules tat govern realtionship between a cell and it's neighbours
- will produce generations of grid
- don't want to mutate existing grid as that would compound errors across generations
- new grid will become current (rinse repeat)
- TL:DR:
complex behavior can be derived from simple rules - IRL - used in biology and chemistry to simulate models for research
- Research Paper
- population simulation (grass, rabbits, foxes)