Ya gotta dream big, ER, but you should also try to keep it sweet — and chocolaty.

Except Conway didn’t need robots, the behavior emerged naturally from the math. Computers and software are useful in helping to visualize how it works, but they are not involved in its unfolding. “Life” is a fundamental property of a man-made universe.

Ever since its publication, Conway’s Game of Life has attracted much interest, because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. Life provides an example of emergence and self-organization. It is interesting for computer scientists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules. The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that “design” and “organization” can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer. (Emphasis my own–ER) For example, philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway’s Life “universe” extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe.

This is how I think the universe is organized, at the quantum level. Subatomic particles and granular space-time units act as fractal automata and their multidimensional grid matrix that at larger scales exhibit emergent behavior. At every level of magnification, you can see structure, pattern, order and organization, but it all arises from a few simple rules operating by random chance.

Quantum phenomena give rise to chemical phenomena which give rise to biological phenomena which in turn lead to behavioral, sociological and eventually ecological phenomena. Step back far enough and you see evolutionary phenomena. And this is only one pathway, the one leading to living beings and their communities. There are other pathways, perhaps even an infinite number, each resulting in highly complex systems composed of simpler components; from the formation of superclusters of galaxies to Gaia herself.

Life “creatures” can be used to simulate logic gates in a computer, making programmable devices possible in the Life Universe. You don’t need wires and electricity or even a programmer to make a thinking machine, it is an implicit property of abstract mathematical space itself.

Intelligence and consciousness do not cause this to happen. This is what eventually leads to consciousness and intelligence.

“Everything which is not forbidden is mandatory”.