Inventing Game of Life (John Conway) - Numberphile

John H Conway on the creation of his Game of Life. Conway playlist: bit.ly/ConwayNumberphile
More at: • Does John Conway hate ...
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Including the indirect roles of John von Neumann and Martin Gardner.
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[@TheRedfire21]

May he rest in peace a true genius of this century.

[@medexamtoolsdotcom]

Oh damn, and he died of covid-19 too. I met him once, in 1998, in Toronto, he gave a bunch of lectures about life and his method of figuring out the day of the week of old days with 'doomsdays'.

[@shaneofgames3825]

:(

[@falpsdsqglthnsac]

F

[@Alex-02]

Yves Nyfeler Ph.D. Are you hearing yourself speak? Are you sure you would still say that if you were one of the weak?

[@GRBtutorials]

Yves Nyfeler Ph.D. So the world would be much better off without the Game of Life? Being “weak” doesn’t mean you can’t make significant contributions to society, you know? Are you really going live by your word when you’re “old and weak”, and stay at home, and not go to the hospital so that “nature cleanses the population”? I highly doubt it.

[@MrJason005]

He died today, 11th of April 2020. Rest in peace.

[@RDaneelOliwav]

That's sad.. Its wierd, the game of life came just to my mind because I've seen it years ago and I just looked it up on KZbin and wondered if he's still alive and now I read he died not even a day ago

[@hohohoupufuru]

Put him next to three live people, maybe he'll come back

[@guyingrey1072]

@@hohohoupufuru I truly wish.

[@J3R3MI6]

Hopeful genius 📜

[@jazzochannel]

Perhaps the mathematical merits of this game are not optimal or intriguing from his perspective / evaluation, but the game will live on and keep impressing and engaging (nerds) people for at least a few more decades. People come and go. Configurations live for many turns or they don't. It's all beautiful, it's all unpredictable. Let's appreciate the curiosity and astonishment this game spurs in non-mathematicians and not dwell on his death too much? I send my sympathies to his offspring and siblings, if any, but that should not matter too much... This person's work / silly endaveor affected me in a positive way. That's enough for me to say I will remember John Conway and he has a special place among my memory neurons.

[@jeffrey1298]

"The one thing I'd really like to know before I die is-" NOOOOOOOOOOOOO... 11:02

just commenting here to get a notification when the video is released :D

[@matijabl]

...the "monster group", what it's all about, why it's there, why it exists...

[@AgustinusLaw]

WHAT, WHAT DOES HE SAY NEXT?

[@iamthetinkerman]

killed it didnt it

[@foxabilo]

the last word is "why" he would like to know WHY

[@johnclavis]

LOL he's like a musical artist that is sick of playing his biggest hit at every concert!

[@Punk4kids]

+John Clavis Not really, but close. He is more like a skilled musician, sick of everybody asking him to play a very simple song he made, and nobody asking about the truly complicated work he has done.

[@johnclavis]

Right, and everybody asks for that song because it's his most popular work -- in other words, his "biggest hit"!

[@random6434]

+John Clavis And the game of life is basically just a consequence of the halting problem, which had been resolved years before. So I suppose that's like the biggest hit also being a minor variation of Pachelbel's Canon but most people don't realise.

[@fergusmaclachlan1404]

He's a bit like Sergei Rachmaninoff with his famous C# minor prelude in that sense. Rachmaninoff grew to hate the piece because he was always asked to perform it.

[@aryasuri9421]

So, the equivalent of Creep to Radiohead.

[@ijabbott63]

R.I.P. John Horton Conway, born 26 December 1937, died of COVID-19 on 11 April 2020 (aged 82).

[@StefanReich]

Did I care about these numbers? No

[@nadavzeira389]

@@StefanReich F off then, no one asked if you care or not . Pay some respects .

[@Pizzacheese10]

@@yvesnyfelerph.d.8297 I see your name has Ph.D. in it. I assume you got your Phd in Asshole at Dickhead Uni

[@somerandomweeb4836]

@@Pizzacheese10 I'd have to agree, wtf is wrong with him

[@coinbaselive9421]

@@yvesnyfelerph.d.8297 what is actually wrong with you.

[@OwariNeko]

Brady, you sadist editor.

[@briank5437]

Yeah, that picture at 2:00...

[@Jonnern]

"If you couldn't predict what it did, then probably that's because it was capable of doing anything."

[@FeaturingMaxAsMax]

What I liked about this video was the background: the fact that the invention of the Game of Life was very deliberate, and came from thinking abstractly about what you would need to sustain life on other planets. I didn't know that John von Neumann had already invented a similar complex system with 29 states. I'm sorry Conway was so ambivalent about the Game of Life. I totally get it, because to him the game was just a simplification, a demonstration of a principle that someone else had already discovered. It's not his own discovery and so he couldn't get very enthusiastic about it. There are other things he would rather be known for: the surreal numbers, the Conway simple groups, the 15 theorem and the 290 theorem, for example. But he doesn't quite grasp that discovery is not the only way you can contribute to the world. Sometimes taking someone else's discovery, revealing its bare essentials and making it accessible to millions of people IS an actual breakthrough.

[@NathanHedglin]

Well put! Exactly. Conway's Game of Life is so easily explained and understood. It is so simple but yet complete enough to recreate itself.

[@MikeMoceri]

Wow. I'm amazed that Conway doesn't find his work all that extensible. I was initially inspired by a demonstration of the Game of Life on The Screen Savers when I was a kid. I based my undergraduate thesis on emergent complexity (using the Game of Life as an example) as applied to philosophy of mind and the Hard Problem. I based a lot of my graduate work in law and mind sciences on it, too. I've used Conway's Game of Life as a proof for emergent complexity, and applied the concept to numerous disciplines. Very sad that he doesn't see the value of it.

[@rich1051414]

And then there are big brain people with creations so meta it preemptively explains why they hate the thing they made which is sure to be popular, like the song 'Hook' by blues traveler. The game of life is the most extreme simplification of an idea, which I am sure he very much doesn't like. Like watching a dora the explorer version of your favorite movie.

[@hobit7585]

Look man, if all the above didnt get you laid in the real world, what makes you think they'll work in youtube comments?You oversold it.And before you ask, no, there is no way to make it sellable.

[@keiyakins]

The trick is that the extreme simplicity means anyone can grasp it, which makes it incredibly useful... OUTSIDE of mathematics. Being able to go "look at this, these simple rules can do this" and not need an extensive higher mathematics education means you can use that idea in other fields, which opens up a lot of ways to reason about our world. That doesn't make it particularly interesting to someone working in the mathematics world though

[@TheSghetty]

Wow! Is your undergraduate thesis online? I would like to read it :)

[@soufianekun11]

Hi @Mike Moceri ! You seem to be very advanced in the theory and applications of GoL and CAs (I hope) in general. So I'd like to ask you if there is a method to know if a 2D CA will "converge" given a certain set of rules and an initial patern ?

[@jemesmemes9026]

I don’t know why I have tears in my eyes about this man. But I guess I never realized how inspired I was by him Rest In Peace

[@atikahrostam5778]

Same here 😢

[@SiriusAundB]

I remember seeing this a few months ago, I'm coming back to pay respects to this brilliant mind. Rest in peace.

[@Aefire1]

Brady, I listened to your podcast about the comments system, but I forget if you mentioned if you still peruse the comments anyway. Here's my two cents: These video's are astonishingly good. You have introduced me and millions of others to thinkers and ways of thinking that would have been otherwise nonexistent to us. These ways of thinking will influence me for the rest of my life. Thank you.

[@ai_serf]

Seriously, this!. Aftering 'passively' watching these videos, I noticed my conceptual thinking has greatly improved. No, you won't be able to crunch equations from watching these videos, but you might learn what the equation is modeling and abstracting. You're going to get intuition for some math from watching these videos. Maybe being immersed in the mathematical world, where you pick up on their language and thinking.

[@Englor1]

The one thing I'd really like to know before I die is the one thing he'd really like to know before he dies.

[@morkovija]

Someone above wrote: "..the "monster group", what it's all about, why it's there, why it exists..." No idea what it is.

[@AlexAtGuilford]

You'll probably never get to know. He died yesterday, according to his friends, from Corona-virus. This has not been officially confirmed.

[@buffendene9996]

AlexSchooler in the life death video he said it: riemann hypothesis and something about monster group

[@AlexAtGuilford]

@@buffendene9996 Yeah, I've seen that since posting this comment. You make a reasonable inference.

[@NikiHerl]

Oh wow, that last second XD What a tease!

[@RoyAntaw]

The game goes on. So long John RIP

[@mightyNosewings]

Dude, you got to interview Conway? What, an honor.

[@OneTimeCrazy]

I feel special when i watch this

[@deepakkumar99933]

"The one thing I'd really like to know before I die is to understand why the monster group exists" :) FTFY RIP you legend!

[@AlucardNoir]

Jacob Grimm was an extraordinarily important linguist and anthropologist, mostly remembered for collecting and rewriting a series of fairy tales, J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist and English language teacher for most of his life, he is best remembered for the Middle Earth series, and the're not even the only ones, we unfortunately don't choose what we are remembered for, Just look at Fermat, remembered for one theorem, out of hundreds, all being nothing more then his hobby.

[@larrym3637]

i get sad when one of the 2x2 squares die :(

[@Backtrack3332]

F

[@manuelchamorro1993]

i actually dont like the 2x2 squares, i like when the gliders (the little ones that move foreverly on the board and repeat themselves) hit the squares and i love it when they reborn from the chaotic celular like explosions

[@Astrobrant2]

"i get sad when one of the 2x2 squares die :(" Don't think of them as dying. Just think of them as food pellets or mines. Food pellet: when a pattern hits it the pattern expands, oscillates, or generates new patterns. Mine: when a pattern hits it the pattern and mine are blown up and nothing remains. Yeah, that's destructive, but at least it fulfilled a purpose. Think of it the way Dennis Hopper's character thinks of it in the movie _Speed_ .

[@oliverdiamond6594]

i made one that duplicated itself and then ate the duplicate

[@rishonfernandes7976]

Imagine doing all this work before computers. The imagination one must have. Simply genius.

[@SebastienChataignon]

I just heard about his passing away due to Covid-19. It's a great loss. May he rest in peace.

[@jaredwfrick]

Has it been tried three-dimensionally? Is there an iteration where the behaviors of the pieces can evolve new strategies (or forget or lose old ones) for reproduction/control of game volume/etc.?

[@jackerylel]

Could be possible in minecraft for example

[@dukcy7450]

Eugene Vovk well isn’t that possible because Minecraft has a complex yet simple AI system that generates seeds and spawn rates? However, there is a limit to the game has a computational limit, so wouldn’t that mean there isn’t a way for that?

[@jackerylel]

@@dukcy7450 yes I believe if you are far enough away in Minecraft then it will not compute the interactions. Then perhaps Unity is the best option

[@AnonAnono]

@@jackerylel did you just say that because graphics engine + cubes ?

[@jackerylel]

@@AnonAnono yes and easier mod support. Any programming language that supports easy array indexing can simulate this, but I imagine visualizing it is the interesting part

[@Locut0s]

I think I can understand why he doesn't really love the game. On the one had its a beautiful example of emergent complexity and has some neat properties. On the other for someone who probably loves doing more traditional, elegant math it probably seems more like an interesting bobble. I think it's similar to why some famous musicians come to hate the 2 mins in one small piece or whatever that sometimes comes to define them. They point to their whole body of work and say but THIS is what I REALLY love, that little ditty is fine I guess but it doesn't mean much to me. I think I can understand.

[@stanley2837]

From : Ms. Siobhan Robert's biography "Genius at Work" : "The sacred name of Conway! . . . he gets peeved that more often than not his name is cited only in reference to the Game of Life. He has invented many an idiosyncratic algorithm-for counting stairs while you climb without actually counting... "

[@rustycherkas8229]

Apparently Ravel, famous for "Bolero", said, "I've written only one masterpiece -- Bolero. Unfortunately it has no music in it."

[@MadScientist267]

I think there's the "but it's just a couple effing simple rules!" and after years of seeing what's come of it, while some of the journey was inspiring, especially early on... After a bit... Yeah he's long gone past it and it is now a brick in his foundation. He recognizes some of the reach but he probably went on in a totally different direction than the rest of the world and basically "we won't let it go" to him hahaha

[@TranscenDaMental]

Wow, I love his realness! Rest In Peace. I’m truly intrigued and inspired by the concepts of Conway’s Game of Life.

[@djbside1965]

RIP John Conway (1937-2020) and thanks for your brilliance. You will be sadly missed, Sir.

[@devilette]

RIP Dr. Conway. He honestly was my inspiration for getting back into maths after uni. The inspiration for creating the Game of Life came from a broader theory called "surreal numbers", which he goes into in his book "On Numbers and Games." Pretty interesting, if you're into number theory.

[@TomHiggins]

Brady, I do not ask this of many of your great works, but given that so many of us have spent so much of our time dabbling in the fields of Life can we please please get as much of the footage from the Conway interviews as you might want to share? Please. Of all your subjects Conway is the one i would love to hear more from. Ok to be honest I would love to hear more from most of your subjects, but Conway in particular. Also, good work on HI, I am enjoying your interchange with CGP .

[@THExRISER]

I second this, especially considering that now, we sadly won't be getting anything new from Mr Conway now that he passed away.

[@Dayanto]

That ending :P

[@Banzybanz]

RIP John. Just out of sheer coincidence, I googled for the Game of Life last week and turned out he had passed away the previous day.

[@DustNunchakuKing]

Could listen to him talk about math and life for hours.

[@vox__ama6458]

May he rest in peace. The true definition of genius

[@SP3HSSMAHREEN]

Thanks, high school comp sci teacher for giving our class the basics way back when, and thanks numberphile for giving all that neat extra info that I continue to watch for

[@ayoyok]

this is better than the listed one, please but please give us more with this guy!

[@numberphile]

I will list this one too - just didn't want to bombard everyone's inboxes and feeds, etc, with two videos at once... and there is more to come.

[@ranmindyt2902]

You won’t be forgotten.

[@JayHeather]

Goodbye man, you were a true genius. May your soul rest in math heaven.

[@drkaranmannan]

"if you cant predict what it does , well then it can probably do anything"

[@massimookissed1023]

Is that why You made all those quarks and a few simple rules? Just to see what might happen? "Wow! Galaxies, sweet. Whoa! Supernova, that was cool! Blackholes, huh. Awesome! Wow, the Muslims *really* don't like the Jews!"

[@drkaranmannan]

+Massimo O'Kissed Hey! the universe was my high school science project. had to make some adjustments to impress the teacher...

[@JorgetePanete]

Victor Reznov can't* predict

[@cryingwater]

1980s: I can't predict the future 2019:

[@cryingwater]

@@tthung8668 wtf, stop self liking your own comment

[@SweHolme]

that ending...uncool...

[@numberphile]

I don't consider that the end of THIS video, it is a trailer of something in another upcoming video with Conway.... The bit before the "end slate" is the end of THIS video!

[@SweHolme]

Numberphile aha ^^ okej :-)

[@trucid2]

***** Let's hope it won't take too long, or we'll never find out.

[@Albin_Evald]

+Numberphile well none of the (two) links in this video takes you to a video where he finish off that sentence, so i consider it an END alright !

[@denisl2760]

+Numberphile So it's been 2 years.......still waiting

[@GH-oi2jf]

I remember reading the original Martin Gardner column on Life (1970). That was such a wonderful column. The rest of the magazine, too. I hardly ever look at the current version of the magazine.

[@empoleon7750]

Coding this was actually our first major assignment in one of my college classes this past semester.

[@juangreen8194]

thanks for the video, Conway is a legend.

[@makaipost260]

There is a new shooter game that just came out called SUPERHOT. In the game's menu (which is set up like an old 1980s work computer) there is a file that has a bunch of mini "games" in it. One of the mini-games is the game of life.

[@keksoslav1743]

Realy? I didnt find this game

[@legendgames128]

I have it on Xbox One. Rest in piece John Conway.

[@TroubleMakersMinecraft]

Legend psvr is better

[@ToastyBoy17]

Now I have to watch the next video! My curiosity of boils within me, growing with each second!

[@brightboy3626]

RIP to this man🙏

[@jdferreira]

I know the game of life is uber cool and stuff. But I would really like to see Conway talk about surreal numbers!

[@andrewkocurek195]

Man, that end of the video is some pretty dastardly trolling.

[@coders111]

thank you for sharing this moment with john Conway !

[@makingmemark]

thanks so much for recording this

[@nicolassamanez6590]

The world lost a brilliant mathematician today. RIP John Conway

[@Dmirtao]

These videos with Conway are so great.Thanks Brady! I would be very interested to hear Conway explain his Angel-Devil game, I always found that an interesting game theory problem, and it could be cool to show it off much like the pebbling videos with Dr. Stankova.

[@andraslibal]

I was just teaching this in my simulation class today, so glad I found Conway talking about his work.

[@_mossy_8520]

RIP one of the greatest mind of his generation created one of the best games out there

[@somebodythatiusedtoknoooooooow]

Inventing game of life. This is truly inspirational. I like his style of not taking it too serious because its all too damn serious and unpredictable. Really amazing story ! So, long time ago we have seriously started planning to deploy machines on Mars for the betterment of mankind :) Makes me fuzzy and warm inside.

[@leo848]

R.I.P. John Conway (1937 - 2020)

[@samuelkoppel9014]

Rest in Peace Dear John Conway.

[@brunomendes4159]

just found this out AND I'M IN LOVE

[@amycupcake6832]

Rest In Peace John Conway! :'(

[@MuncleUscles]

Fascinating! The game of life is neat and all, a great example of emergent complexity, but I can completely understand how he's done with it. Can't wait to hear him talk about other topics he finds interesting

[@bokchoiman]

This is brilliant. Absolutely astonished at this.

[@sigmundfreud7903]

It may be a year too late for me but RIP to a truly brilliant mathematician

[@pyramear5414]

RIP John Conway.

[@IMortage]

You can tell for some invidiual problems/configurations that they will not halt, though. Like the glider, or the glider cannon, which will both run infinitely. There just isn't a general algorithm to decide whether it'll halt or not.

[@MrBLAA]

RIP Mr. Conway. You can definitely tell he's from another era of computing power... "well if someone asks me if I can tell, I think 'Oh, maybe that thing looks like it might fall out after 25 moves or so'. " *with most individuals now, thinking in the "one hundred thousand moves or so" era

[@LeCheeZy]

thank you both very much

[@muhammadreyaaz808]

Came here after hearing his death from coronavirus. RIP man. You’ve been great

[@monochr0m]

Rest in Peace Mr Conway.

[@morani789]

It is such a pleasure to listen to John Conway!

[@lucasmontec]

Rest in peace my friend! Thanks for all the creativity and wonder!

[@Holobrine]

2:53 I like his metaphor. When he says tape I assume he means cassette tape. In a more modern sense, DNA is like a DVD: you know the movie's information is stored on it, but without the DVD Player, you have no idea what the movie will be. To make it even more like DNA, suppose the movie on the DVD can change based on who is watching it. In other words, it changes based on its environment.

[@VinBadaBing]

Going back to inhabiting Mars, he mentioned a machine that builds a copy of itself, which to me sounds like a RepRap (Replicating RapidPrototyper). It is a 3D printer that prints parts for other 3D printers. Keep in mind, I said parts, not an entire printer, so I wonder if 3D printers combined with a smelting furnace (like he mentioned) could achieve this task.

[@RsTheZigec]

I really liked both of the videos. Good job

[@metfan999]

Loving the quality of your videos!

[@lipsach]

I would like to see more interviews like this, with people like Ernő Rubik, Alexey Pajitnov...

[@reilyn5366]

It's such a pleasure to listen to him talk. May he rest in peace.

[@Dagrond]

Bravo Brady - and thanks John!

[@danielallum3573]

John Conway and John Von Neumann... my two great Mathematical hero's

[@StevenLiIsHere]

Brady, you should put a link to Vi Hart's video on hexaflexagons.

[@hansnorleaf]

being a first year programming student I decided yesterday when I saw this vid to write my own. It took about ½ hour to write the program and a few hours to set up a gui where you could add or remove"life" with the mouse and load a pre-setup glidergun. It was pretty fun, also to just sit and watch random configurations.

[@hansnorleaf]

Thanks. I've just started my 3rd year now. I still have the code in my dropbox. In case you are interested, I can share a link

[@AnthonyMata]

It's okay I'm in my second year high school CS class and we did it as an assignment.

[@d.lawrencemiller5755]

We miss you 💜

[@johubify]

RIP JON CONWAY

[@scoutgaming737]

Rip Jonh Conway [*]

[@SeanMauer]

I've always been fascinated by the Conway Game of Life because it seems to capture the essence of potential configurations inherent in all of nature. If you could assemble a 3 dimensional version with Plank voxels as the game board and zero point energy states as the neighbors, what set of rules would you have to start with the to get the periodic table?

[@Humineral]

I can't wait for the next edition!

[@ReplicateReality]

still one of my fave videos

[@Kram1032]

Really nice! - Could you talk with him about the other stuff he did? What, would Conway say, is his favourite underrated piece of work?

[@MysticJabulon]

RIP John Conway

[@PengPoyZneiz]

I can't stop thinking about Minecraft when I see this/read about "Game of life". Both such a simple idea and yet so deep. In Minecraft you can build a hard drive with 4KB of memory and a working 6 digit calculator. Again, both using simple ideas and fundamental mathematics yet achieving greatness!

[@Hwyadylaw]

+PengPoyZneiz Building computers in Minecraft is very very simililar to building theoretical computers in real life. Of course you don't have to worry about materials, resistivity, polarity etc. in Minecraft

[@mathmachine4266]

Even though it wasn't anything impressive mathematically, conways game of life still inspires a lot of people to be interested in computer science. Whenever I show people my programs, they're always more fascinated by the game of life than they are by any of the other, more impressive things I make. I think that's the magic of it.

[@GamerDudester]

2:21 You will go to that time over, and over, and over again =D

[@fergusmaclachlan1404]

Nah, just twice.

[@fergusmaclachlan1404]

OK, thrice.

[@fergusmaclachlan1404]

Four times. Never mind.

[@LynneSkysong]

So, with his game of life, you can do cool things like make glider guns. BUT what I'm wondering now is how the game of life would work if it was modified for a 3D space. For instance, what about if you played the Game of Life on a geodesic sphere? Of course, you'd be working with triangles instead of squares, so you'd have to tweak the rules. And there's different sizes for the geodesic sphere that you could use too... Hmm... You wouldn't be able to make an endless glider gun in this because it would wrap around. So I wonder if that means that all potential starting configurations would have stable end states (or a repeating loop). I think this would be really interesting to simulate.

[@trucid2]

aaron Lecon In other words, like any other computer with no inputs (no mouse, keyboard, network access or sensors).

[@DamaKubu]

Not necessarily u can work with cubes and have same rules. Just for every cube there is not 8 but 26 possible neighbours.

[@scottb9997]

tbh i think that would be fairly easy to program in c

[@matherman1111]

R.i.p John Conway, may his work continue thriving in the world of mathematics

[@habibaghasafari2237]

it's absolutely amazing!

[@trashcat3000]

Rest in Peace

[@EmergencyTemporalShift]

What?! Nooo! What do you want to know?! Also I didn't know this guy was still alive, I guess I just kinda assumed he was dead.

[@KingLich451]

well... :(

[@jomolisious]

Rest well, friend.

[@williamvasudevan]

Go is such a great game as well! From one great game another is created!

[@fdutrey]

The game of life ... RIP John Conway

[@GlobalH4x]

Rest in peace

[@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself]

KZbin recommending me these Conway Life videos one year after. Thanks for the cry..

[@philosophyofmany4317]

May he Rest In Peace.