Following is a paragraph from the book what is time.
Game of life.
Three men played a game, on the canvas of time.
Rules were set, the audience was there to witness it all.
Good and evil were winning.
While wisdom played in silence.
For a long time, until it becomes a duet.
And they shot at each other, stabbed at each other
While the audience shook in horror
The wisdom disappeared with the prize
Into the thin air.
The British mathematician John Horton Conway created the game ‘Life’ in 1970, which is a zero-player game, which depends on its initial state and evolution without further inputs. The game is played on an infinite canvas with cells which have two states either live or dead. The cells interact with neighboring cells by a set of simple rules.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbors survives.
Any dead cell with three live neighbors becomes a live cell.
All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead.
By applying these rules over generations, various patterns were observed, like still life, oscillators and spaceships (which moves forward), and in 2013 the first, self replicator was discovered.
It is fascinating to see how such simple rules can develop complex architectures which mimic biology in nature. To understand our game of life, we need to understand our rules of the game. How are we going to do that if ever, when all we can do is process information and give an output (programming to life). Are we giving enough good information for our machine to understand its own outputs? What is the language these rules are written in? Do you think it's English, Spanish or mathematics?
Simplicity and complexity- philosophy for life.
This is something, which we should be more focused. I can give you loads and loads of examples apart from John Conway's game of life.
Think about the English language. It has only 27 letters. However, with these 27 letters I am passing a massage of complex ideas about life and death, in this blog. Every novel ever written in English uses only these 27 letters. Not only fiction, even science and new discoveries, new knowledge build upon 27 letters. Isn't that fascinating to think about?
Think about the computer science. In any programming language there are only few words. But these words are used in different combinations to bring out 'Windows' and functioning programs. Even Artificial intelligence, which has the ability to generate new knowledge depends on these few words.
Think about our DNA. These microscopic molecules, which are still destroyed with a little heat and pressure, carry information necessary to carry out thousands and thousands of complex biochemical reactions inside our body, to build us from a single cell. Isn't it amazing, just few atoms determine who we are?
Think about how a bird fly? Here in this article (Into the wild blue yonder) I discuss about how the same question answered by different people. And here, I give the answer given by Richard Fenman. And he will explain complexity that we see is formed by simple rules of nature.
I asked Richard Feynman why do birds fly?
He was kind. He thought about it and spoke. "Well, I can give you easy answer or I can give you a longer version of it. Easy answer is the force generated by the flapping of wings of the bird is enough to lift its weight against gravity and the forward thrust generated is more than the resistance. So, they fly, my boy that is how an airplane fly. That is how we build our airplanes to mimic the nature. But, if you truly want to know how birds fly, I will say fundamentally it is due to interactions of four forces of nature,
Gravity: The force of attraction between masses.
Electromagnetism: The force between charged particles.
Weak Nuclear Force: Responsible for radioactive decay and neutrino interactions.
Strong Nuclear Force: Holds the nuclei of atoms together.
That is all there. Anything you see happening is happening due to these interactions. Not only this, but you also ask this question and I answer the question because of these forces. You and I live and die due to same reasons.
But as you would understand whatever explanations given to the questions of deep philosophical value, we try to understand them with our current words and language (Even Richard Feynman answer). From 27 letters. But What if there are more simpler rules that nature has. And everything else is manmade? What is a good philosophy for life?
Have you ever thought about the rules of the game of life? Or You just play without knowing the rules. Imagine two people argue over an ownership of a piece of land. We argue with our words, those 27 letters. Get angry and kill each other over this. But those were just manmade rules. And you can read about who owns anything, here in this article.
Rules of the game of life are simple. And only with the mindfulness we would be able to see them. And they are written everywhere without words, if you look with mindful eye. Let's practice this today.
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