On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 12:18:01AM +0100, Quentin Anciaux wrote: > Hi Russel, > > Le Jeudi 03 Novembre 2005 22:11, Russell Standish a ??crit??: > > > > > Even then, there is still a loophole. I suspect that 3D environment > > are far more likely to evolve the complex structures needed for > > consciousness, so that conscious GoL observers are indeed a rare > > thing. I don't know if this is the case or not, but if true it would > > make a GoL example irrelevant. More interesting is to look at some 3D > > CA rules that appear to support universal computation - Andy Wuensche > > had a paper on this in last year's ALife in Boston. No arXiv ref I'm > > afraid, but you could perhaps email him for an eprint... > > > > Cheers > > > But 3D, 2D CA is of no relevance... the way we see the computation through > the > gol as nothing in common with how hypothetical living being inside the gol > would perceive their environment. > > Quentin
True, but I suspect it does have impact on the likelihood of conscious observers arising in such a system. In a plenitude of CAs of different rules and dimensionality, initialised at random, I suspect that 3D or higher CAs will dominate the measure of those CAs that generate the complex data structures needed for conscious observers. Perhaps 3D is even favoured. This is, of course, a hunch to be proven or disproven by some future mathematical genius. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 (") UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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