The Game of Life

this may be one of my most interesting posts if you take the time to really explore this program. The program is called "the game of life" and it was created by john conway ( not the son of me and melanie conway, just some dude). Basically the program shows how the self automaticity of simple cellular life could work. The program runs on simple rules, which you can change if youd like, but i recommend leaving the rules the same unless your experienced with the program. The rules are similar to representations of how neuron activation might work in your brain or how single cells might live in a cimple organism. the rules are as follows

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

these rules make it so the program will continue to run once you hit go and evolve on its own without any later input. This shows how a small living organism can do things like move without a real brain or intention, just based on a principle called self organization.

so basically if you want to mess around just click a few boxes adjacent to eachother or diagonal to each other and hit go to see how it grows. start at zoom 4 until your being gets too big, although it probably wont. change the speed from 20 to 1 so u can see whats going on. I also suggest trying some of the pre-formatted starting shapes that you can find on the website which evolve into some really cool shapes. The program is a lot cooler if you understand the theory behind it, and how it relates to our brains and small organisms work. i didnt do the best job explaining it so if you interested i suggest reading something on wikipedia or a more qualified source.

heres the link to a good program the game of life. click enjoy life in the upper left corner to start, make a few shapes and explore while you ponder the implications of whats going on.