On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There is nothing quite so pathetic as someone who starts their comment with > a word like "Bull", and then proceeds to spout falsehoods. > > Thus: in my paper there is a quote from a book in which Conway's efforts > were described, and it is transparently clear from this quote that the > method Conway used was random search: > > "[Conway and his team of collaborators found an appropriate set of rules] > ... only after the rejection of many patterns, triangular and hexagonal > lattices as well as square ones, and of many other laws of birth and death, > including the introduction of two and even three sexes. Acres of squared > paper were covered, and he and his admiring entourage of graduate students > shuffled poker chips, foreign coins, cowrie shells, Go stones or whatever > came to hand, until there was a viable balance between life and death." > > The reference is: Guy, R. K. (1985) "John Horton Conway," in Albers and G L > Alexanderson (eds.), "Mathematical people: Profiles and interviews." > Cambridge, MA: 43-50. > > The rest of your comment, below, is just as full of BS as the first > paragraph.
So you're saying that just because Conway and company didn't work everything out in their heads and relied on external tools and experimented, it means they were doing a "random search" for the behaviours that comprise the Game of Life? Very few mathematical proofs are so simple that they can be conceptualized entirely in one's head. Very few engineering attempts are made without prototypes. Progress is about experimentation. In fact, using your analogy, most of scientific progress could be put down to a "random search". (Just don't start claiming evolution is a random search, or we'll degenerate into a argument about Creationism.) J ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
