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From: chappell@antares (Glenn Chappell)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
Subject: Re: Winning Ways (again)
Message-ID: <1991May8.221030.20606@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 8 May 91 22:10:30 GMT
References: <1991May8.203654.7838@doc.ic.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: chappell@symcom.math.uiuc.edu
Organization: Math Dept., University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
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In article <1991May8.203654.7838@doc.ic.ac.uk> ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (I J Palmer) writes:
>Conway states that Life is `Universal' in that you give him a problem, and
>he can construct a Life thingy to solve it (if it is solvable). But, I say,
>what about getting Life to find (at this point I'd like to point out the
>nice allignment of Life (the word) in this paragraph) a `Garden of Eden' or
>Orphan (pad pad..) Life pattern. This is, I think, a computable problem
>which, by definition, Life (it had to stop somewhere) can not solve !!!!

Well, yes, Life *is* Universal, and it can *find* the solution to any
solvable problem, but it may not be able to communicate this solution to
you in a "nice" way.

As an analogy, suppose I have some sort of language which doesn't have
the word "Eden" in it. With the language I can solve any problem. What
if the answer to the problem is "Eden"? It might be expressed this way:

The first letter is "E"
The second letter is "d"
The third letter is "e"
The fourth letter is "n".

Similarly, some sort of Life computer might be able to find a Garden of
Eden pattern, and "tell you what it is" without that pattern ever
actually existing within the automaton.

				GGC  <><