For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.

Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either “alive” or “dead”. Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.

For example, if a cell is “alive” but has less than 2 “alive” neighbors it “dies” by under-population. If the cell is “alive” and has more than three “alive” neighbors it “dies” from over-population, etc.

Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.

It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles… life.

There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!

  • Djh8878
    3•1 year ago

    What are some other rules to the excel example you gave, kinda want to try programming something like this to see how it’d play out

      • @[email protected]OP
        1•1 year ago

        Yep! The spreadsheet is just an analogy I used to help unfamiliar people visualize what I was talking about.

        The actual rules for Conway’s Game of Life are as follows:

        1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
        2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
        3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
        4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction