Creationists Need to Understand Emergence

Conway's game of life:
http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html (online java applet)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life (info)

Monome (the button grid):
http://monome.org/

My monome clone construction diary:
http://basementleds.blogspot.com/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• emergence
• life
• creation
• abiogenesis
• monome
• cellular
• automaton

[rezkogitans]

Cute, but of no significance whatever when it comes to issues of creation or origins or even emergence. The problem with Life is that in it there *is* no interesting emergence that happens spontaneously. Nothing of much interest has ever "emerged" of any random Life starting pattern. Only when the initial pattern is designed has that happened. Ironically "Life" is not at all fecund.

[bitbutter]

"Nothing of much interest has ever "emerged"[..]"

That depends on what you find interesting. I think that many of the 'natural' mechanisms in Life are interesting.

Of course, since Life does not simulate mutation, there is an upper limit to how complex we can expect the naturally occurring Life objects to be.

Life demonstrates the fact that complexity can spontaneously arise from simple rules and randomness. Far from being of 'no significance', this is the crux to understanding emergence.

[rezkogitans]

Sure, Life is a lot of fun, and so interesting, but in terms of what "creationists need to understand", there is nothing. Nothing emerges. Start with any random pattern, and you get nothing emerging except a few gliders and traffic lights and the like. Nothing complex emerges. Why doesn't it "simulate mutation"? Why should it have to? That should emerge. Are you going to code absolutely everything into it as "simulation"? Then nothing has emerged, it was all just coded in.

[bitbutter]

"Sure, Life is a lot of fun, and so interesting, but in terms of what "creationists need to understand", there is nothing. Nothing emerges."

As I've explained several times now, complexity emerges. Please pay attention. Sure, that complexity doesn't match the 'complex' you likely have in mind. That doesn't matter. The point is that complexity emerges from simple rules, it's very simple.

[rezkogitans]

Well, you *might* be able to develop a cellular automaton (unlike life) in which interesting true life-like and mind-like complexity develop in a manner insensitive to initial conditions. That is, for almost all initial configurations on a sufficiently large plane, this sort of complexity arises. But it doesn't happen in Life, nor in any other cellular automata anyone has ever managed to devise. Bitbutter has no argument here, just wishful thinking so far.

[rezkogitans]

Von Neumann's work is even less impressive. He built his CA explicitly to enable the creation (from outside--again, no emergence of complexity here) of a configuration that would be able to replicate itself.

Conway's CA is in some ways an advance, because in addition to having a much simpler "physics", it has a physics that was not at all explicitly chosen to enable the creation of a universal constructor.

[daniel74f]

With the right settings and an infinite or really large grid "Life" could simulate life. But the probability of life rising in Life is just too slow with a random initialization.

When we turn to our actual universe, then the possibilities of life increase because the "rules" are much more complex (probably not even deterministic), and the energy and matter represent a larger "grid" than any instance of Life ever will.

I mean, comparing a 1000x1000 grid with the Real World physics is not fair.

[halfaheartbongobongo]

conway's game of life isnt the best analogy, because after all, who sets up the board?

[Nate2203]

@pifibbi Who said anything was random? I sure didn't, in fact conways game is the OPPOSITE of random.  There is no need for a rulemaker, the rules are just an occurance of our physical world. Why must you people make excuses for god? He's not real, deal with it.

[pifibbi]

@Nate2203 But we must also take account about where those 3 magic rules came from. The 3 rules running Life were designed by a thinking being (Conway, for example). No matter how simple the rules are, they were "designed". If there was true randomness, no rules would exist, and therefore, nothing can happen!

[Nate2203]

I think the point is that there are only three simple rules, and out of those three simple rules come things that are fairly complex comparitively. As in moving shapes and whatnot. Now take into account all the natural laws and you could concieve of very complex things emerging, don't ya think?

[StephenRoddy]

@rezkogitans Your dumber than the average creationist and that is saying a lot

[DELPHIIII]

amazing!

[AerobicRobot]

Well, if you don't wan't to take CGL into hand, why not take a look at Jon Von Neumann's Cellular Automata. Using only a set of 28 different cells with limited rules, they have been able to make machines that when fed binary tape, can self replicate. They have even been able to make self replicators that have mutations that carry on to the next machine, possibly emulating the stages of evolution.