Xref: utzoo rec.puzzles:8213 sci.math:15483 comp.theory.cell-automata:305 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!msi.umn.edu!umeecs!zip!bagchi From: bagchi@eecs.umich.edu (Ranjan Bagchi) Newsgroups: rec.puzzles,sci.math,comp.theory.cell-automata Subject: How Intelligent are the Winning Ways? Message-ID: Date: 2 Mar 91 06:09:50 GMT Sender: news@zip.eecs.umich.edu Organization: University of Michigan Lines: 34 How well-regarded is the stuff in 'Winning Ways' by Berkamp, Conway, and Guy? Prior to looking at it, I was under the impression that it was basically a book of recerational mathematics, albeit with sound math behind it. Anyway, I looked it up today because I'd heard of some work in it screwing around with Conway's Life ;), and trying to show how to build a computing machine with an appropriate configuration. Anyway...some of the initial proofs I have no problem with, until the author mentions some wonderful things which a Life computer could do, if there were some kind of closed form way to determine what a given Life configuration would stabilize out to. This is where I balked... seeing that a Turing Machine is definitely constructable in Life if you can do a computing machine, then the author just described the Halting Problem, and treats it like it's something decidable. One last anyway... more for the cell-automata folks, but isn't the method of constructing a computing machine gone about in the book (basically modelling the E.E. approach to computer-building, using gates and stuff) kinda un-natural? I've only really just started studying automata theory, but this strikes me as weird. -rj -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ranjan Bagchi - At Large. Well Kinda. | what kind of person bagchi@[eecs | would want to count syllables caen, | just to write haiku? math.lsa].umich.edu | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------