A Tendency Towards Stasis

So this one is likely to fall into the realm of "Setting things down so that I can go back and reevaluate, tear down, and refine later".



The starting point of all this is going to be Conway's Game of Life, which I was initially introduced to in a computer science class at the University of Puget Sound. For an expansive bit about it, you can head here.



The general idea is that Conway's Game of Life simulates a 2-dimensional universe with a finite set of rules that dictate how the state of a two dimensional infinity x infinity universe progresses from one turn to the next. Each point (cell) in the universe has one of two states, alive or dead. The "player" sets the initial states of however many cells that they would like and hits a button to start the universe. The rules take over from there. No additional input from "player" is required.



Once things start, the following rules dictate what happens to each cell in the universe:




1 - Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by loneliness.
2 - Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
3 - Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
4 - Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.



The rules are applied simultaneously to every cell in the universe, producing the next generation, which is used as the seed for the following generation (ad infinitum).



Many patterns simply die out by virtue of the above rules, but others maintain a static configuration (consider a 2x2 grid where all cells are live). Some fluctuate between a series of multiple states (consider a line of three consecutive live cells in a horizontal bar - one turn later, the bar has become vertical, then switches back to horizontal on the following turn). Others move through the universe. They move in a direction without end (as long as they're not acted on by an outside object.... which starts to resemble Newton's laws of motion... but what else would you expect from a math game). There are even configurations that create the above patterns at a fixed period (shooting off moving bits every couple turns, leaving behind static or repeating chunks as they themselves move forward through the grid).



There's a Java based applet that you can play around with here that should give you a feel for Conway's Game of Life.

(Delay in completion of post. Approximately 3 days. Also, I am now at least partially drunk. Hell. All drunk. I poorly made Gimlets, and about 1/3 of a bottle of gin is now gone. After watching my dog Lance for about 2 hours, and finishing reading the book Microserfs by Douglas Copeland. Which, in the last couple of chapters starts talking about things of this nature. Also, I am now at the Mandolin Cafe, drinking coffee, imagining that I will be drinking more in the near future. Such a life. Amusing. My liver protests, but I say, to hell with it. Life less then 100 years ago was a matter of death by TB, Typhoid, infection. 200-300 years ago, plague. And more virulent and painful manners of death beyond. We did not have a life expectancy of 70.1. )

So to step in after the fact. The idea that I'm grasping at here is the thought of stability and the plunge into stable forms of existence. Any number of starting patterns in the game of life end up in a null state immediately. There are an infinite number of single cell starting points that terminate one round in. There are an infinite number of 2 cell starting states that end in failure one round in. And so on and so on. On an infinite grid, there are an infinite number of starting positions of one cell that end immediately. There are an infinite number of two cell starts that end immediately. There are in actuality an infinite number of X cell starting positions (with cells non-neighboring) that fail immediately. Ditto for 2 consecutive cell positions. Failure is not a miracle, but a fact of the game that is true in an infinite number of cases. But, if you were to look at this by itself, you become inundated with the possibility of immediate failure. There are also an infinite number of positions that result in an infinite lifetime for that very same universe simulator. Take a single periodic figure or generating figure, and you have a start state that runs forever. The thought of multiplying infinity is ridiculous, but, for a grid that is infinity x infinity (ever-expanding, no upper bounds, no lower bounds), there are an infinite number of start states that run forever, and infinite number of start states that end immediately. This fails to mention states that do not end immediately, but fail after a particular number of generations.

Those states that end immediately (or in X number of iterations), are inconsequential in this particular theoretical investigation. This universe has not ended yet, and while we may be X number of iterations from this event, (the Big Contraction...), we are currently on the way out, with no anticipated return date. And beyond this, matter in proximity to other matter is not unaffected in general, but is subject to gravity, which in turn is a product of X number of non-discrete distance related measurements.... Physical reality is a bitch when sober, and when drunk becomes an incomprehensible mumble. The only thing that we can hold onto here is that we exist now. And have existed X iterations in the past. At worst, this universe is a starting state that does not stop immediately. It goes on, and on and on. It may end un-heroically at some point. But it has not done so yet.

And perhaps our universe is not governed by rules of the quantity of proximal nodes (0r maybe it is). But it seems apparent by the actuality of existence that there are definite rules. Look to Newton, and the idea and rules surrounding gravity pop into the equation. To phrase this in terms of a Conway universe, you might add a rule to the effect of :

-If X exists in position (a,b) and Y exists in position (c,d), then the positions of figures X and Y in the next generation are determined and affected by the positions of each other.

But this is not the be all and end all of rules of attraction and conjunction. Think about high school chemistry and the idea of Valens electrons jumps in. Elements bond due to the number of electrons in the "outer sell" of a unit of that element.

The fact of stable compounds is a matter of bits and pieces of reality falling into stable forms. The idea of entropy is an idea of the component pieces of the universe falling apart. But things don't fall apart after joining without external forces. Entropy takes on a separate life under this constraint. Entropy becomes bits of the universe falling apart before they can become joined. Or joined pieces drifting apart before forming superstructures. While any universe can start with an infinite number of stable forms of existence (perpetual in themselves or given to propagation), it can also be said that a universe can start with both non-perpetual forms as well as forms that are perpetual as well. After a given number of generations, the non-perpetual forms will die out while those that have a form that encourages persistence will continue.

Life and existence then becomes a matter of matter falling into the forms that are in fact stable. By definition, anything that fails to fall into one of these forms will die off in a finite number of generations.

(To be continued...)