ConwayLife.com

Reminder for myself to make discussions about the project in this thread:
https://github.com/conwaylife-dev/conwaylifedb

The poll thread did not give any definite conclusion, other than that there are already at least several votes from people on either side. I'll quote here the latest post in the poll thread : I stand corrected. I'm sorry about the misinformation and I can see that people can perceive this term both...

Writing a post on the poll thread made me think of an alternate wording. Since there is much debate of what it's reflecting, how about we make the term generic to sidestep this debate? "A dependent X reflector is an X reflector that ..." "A dependent reflector is any dependent X reflector for any X"...

I stand corrected. I'm sorry about the misinformation and I can see that people can perceive this term both ways in existing usage (either accepting a range or requiring the stream to be strict)

A dependent conduit is a different thing and a different term. I'm referring to Sokwe's first usage of the term where it originated. You can go to the link in my last post to see that it originated from the same adjective. Edit: I don't agree with 'recent'. The current definition was already there ...

Why must we have such a binary mindset? Why not call them semidependent reflectors or something? I want to clarify the intention of the poll, which I have purposefully left unclear because I wanted to minimize its effect to the result of the poll. The term "dependent reflector" was used before its ...

Update: confocaloid noted that there are two possible different interpretations of my wording In other words, if we define X as a reflector that requires the next active object to arrive at a..b generations, X and "dependent reflector" are different terms. https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php...

Maybe one should clarify whether "a..b generations" means relative to the timing of the previous input glider, or relative to how the glider would be timed in a period-N input stream. The second option would allow e.g. periodic reflectors where each individual glider can be either aligned correctly...

Hello, this poll is intended to collect the current semantics of the term "dependent reflector". - The LifeWiki definition of "dependent reflector" is based on periodic dependent reflectors. According to the current definition a dependent reflector requires the next active object to arrive at exactl...

... I also want to point out I'm not nitpicking to suggest my artificial argument, this term had a semantic meaning I have taken for granted for years, so I really want to make this clear. Also considering that the meaning of this term is the very topic of this thread, I think it's worth carrying o...

The current definition is written by someone who (I believe) has good knowledge of stable technology and reflectors in particular, and importantly the current definition is older than the attempted redefinition of "dependent reflector". (I think this made me think that the term is on the wiki) I fo...

As a matter of fact, I did not "alter the meaning" of terms. A periodic reflector is described as dependent if it requires that the incoming stream repeat with the same period as the reflector, or independent otherwise. My bad, I think I remembered false memories of seeing my suggested definition o...

Well, I think the current definition of "dependent reflector" does not cover such devices, at least. Personally, I think it shouldn't cover them -- they are different devices. Whoops, I didn't expect you to reply so fast. Let me point out what I edited in in my last post: Edit for context: I'm stro...

A dependent reflector would be a reflector that works [is guaranteed to work] at a specific period N -- and is not guaranteed to behave in any specific way when the input stream is not a correctly timed uninterrupted period-N stream. I strongly disagree. I think dependent reflector should mean a re...

confocaloid wrote: ↑

August 19th, 2023, 2:30 am

I believe that depends on how you advertise the reflector.

I meant the current dependent reflector terminology cannot describe, for example, p249-251 dependent reflectors. Which I'm almost certain everyone thinks is a dependent reflector.

This is a separate point but I think the current definition in the wiki cannot describe the dependent version of Silver's reflector which requires the next signal to appear in some time range but not requiring the stream to be periodic (I got that right, right?)

(consecutive post because confocaloid replied with an edit) First things first I need some time because I had a precise mathematical idea of a "black box" and "white box" terminology when I thought about this (Edit: I had thought about this before your post) and I need some time to analyze your stat...

The reason why the two approaches look contradictory is because you're introducing gliders while joining them. Adding gliders have a nonzero effect on the reflector.(just as any other signal circuitry) You can think of that part as a degenerate kind of 0-degree dependent reflector, or you can redefi...

Note: My stance is essentially Pavgran's post. Pavgran may or may not agree with my post though. Now, the seemingly paradoxical part is that - As long as you use the device as a dependent reflector, you can increase or decrease the "total path length" (assuming that's meaningful), by moving the "tro...

Honestly I think some CGoL definitions are inherently hard to well-define, as definitions come out of observing patterns rather than become formalized from the ground up. Just as it's hard to rigorously define a "cat" given an image. That being said here are some ideas that might help. For a perturb...

Note for context: the p3 "hassler" I posted below was a joke (people in Discord were trying to make the lowest period pi hassler as far as I remember). If that one makes it difficult to settle on a definition feel free to ignore it.

This glider extraction works thanks to this reaction, which releases a temporary glider that doesn't escape: x = 19, y = 24, rule = B3/S23 9b2o$8bobo$8bo$3bob2ob2o$3b2obo$6bo$6b2o5bo$12b3o$11b5o$10bo5bo$9b2o2b o2b2o$8b3obobob3o$9b2o2bo2b2o$16bo$15bo$2b2o8bobo$bobo6b2obo$bo8bobo$ 2o4b2obobo$5bobobob...

Okay, did I understand correctly that you think the following sentence is correct: All dependent reflector s can depend on a regular and uninterrupted input stream of signals; i.e. it will fail if any of the signals are missing. But you want the term "dependent reflector" to be more general than thi...

I think this depends on the specific situation. When there is a specific engineered pattern, and someone would like to describe or discuss this pattern, there may be some "interesting" information flow that is best described in terms of signals, and some "boring" information flow that is best descr...

I think the current common usage is that the word "signal" is normally used when referring to something that actually carries some interesting information. What is your definition of "interesting imformation?" The same data 33 can be represented as a binary stream 100001 or a unary stream of 33 con...