Conway's Life, seebs

[Michali]

Originally Posted by fragment

Why do you say it's actually a gray square? If the two states are entirely equivalent, as you argue, what grounds do you have for preferring one over the other as the actual state?

Sorry I missed this. When I use the words "actually a grey square" I'm not meaning (obviously) that its actually grey in its appearance to you in color. In fact, the reason we have such a hard time conceiving this is due to the fact that I am asking you to imagine that this 3 X 3 grid, and the rules of Conway's life, are the only things that exist.

Because the state where it appeared blue is useful to us in this argument (i.e., thus blue square is functioning in our Universal system), its hard for me to say that it is "actually a grey square" when it should be described as "its actually a grey square if all there was was the 9-cell grid and the laws of Conway's life."

I am also attempting to lay out why I have an inclination to believe this, and like I said earlier, it is only "relevantly a blue square" if it has something to do with its contribution to the state at which the system stabilizes. So the reason its not actually a blue square in my example is due to the fact that the entire grid is acting under a single law. Just like when someone hallucinates and sees a pink elephant, and then they realize that they are hallucinating one, they know that their mind is reporting "there is a pink elephant in your room" but this is ultimately false. He can report the pink elephant, and be justified in saying a pink elephant is appearing in his mind, but he can't say one exists in reality. And we do say things like this... "there isn't actually a pink elephant", or "there isn't really a pink elephant". Now, I could use that pink elephant for other tasks, such as entertaining myself, or a good story for later, but it isn't real on the basis that on some important universal level it isn't relevant in the same way other things in my room are.

The difference between the use of the terms "actual cell color" and "relevant cell color" in the context of the simulator is that "actual cell color" can be used to interpret the immediate next state and "relevant cell color" is used to interpret at least two states forward. Even if we had an extremely complex initial state, it is imaginable that if you ran the system and saw how it stabilized, you could look at the initial state and "interpret the actual state" as the stabilized state. You do not have to have the individual processes to figure this out, because those processes are used due to the fact that we aren't aware of the law that dictates the initial state is (and not "will become") the stable state. Just like a grid the size of a small law, exampled before, is almost the same thing we use to describe the law.

So, someone says "Hey, how do I play Causway's life?" I say, "A blue cell by itself will become grey in the next generation". Am I giving him an experience of this 3 x 3 grid and two generations, or am I telling him how a lone blue square should be interpreted? I am inclined to think that I am telling him how it should be interpreted in the system so he can work it out.