Life Lexicon update collection thread

[confocaloid]

(Append:)

2) Because of my strong belief in the priorities described in item #1, a large proportion of the changes that you were trying to make recently on the LifeWiki look to me like they're making things gradually worse (more confusing) instead of better.

For the record, I still think the changes I am suggesting would be improvements. When the word 'signal' is unnecessary or irrelevant, omitting it is an improvement -- the word does not contribute to clarity of the statement. An artificial "enforced reinforcement" of a different meaning of the word 'signal' is obviously unhelpful.
Reflectors reflect gliders or other spaceships; a conduit takes an input active object and produces an output active object (not necessarily carrying a signal, but the signal would remain unchanged as the reaction goes through the conduit), and so on.

In the meantime, it's useful to know that even the specific change quoted in Option 1 is considered to be an improvement over the status quo, by a supermajority of the community members who have voted so far.

You might be missing the possibility that what you describe as "a supermajority of the community members who have voted so far" might be people who were confused by the wording in the poll and the "combined options". I think it is likely that people are confused as to what are the actual underlying issues.

In addition to what I wrote above in an edit to the previous post, here are some examples of existing use of 'signal' with an obvious explicit distinction between the signal itself and the thing that carries it:

:Herschel loop: [...] A mechanism for a period-52 loop was found in April 2018, but it includes stages where the signal is carried by triplets of {glider}s so it may not be considered to be a pure Herschel loop. [...]

Finally: a much better way of getting signals around the edges of these four-shotgun designs, would be to send them via MWSSes from one corner of their bounding box. An MWSS-carried signal would get to the opposite corner of the bounding box, [...]

However, asking for such examples misses a bigger point -- the important thing is the semantics (i.e. the useful distinction between the information and the active object that carries that information). "Carried by", "a signal cannot be mirrored", etc. are consequences. I do not think this wording is particularly "awkward" (certainly it is not *that* much "awkward" as you are saying).

[dvgrn]

You might be missing the possibility that what you describe as "a supermajority of the community members who have voted so far" might be people who were confused by the wording in the poll and the "combined options". I think it is likely that people are confused as to what are the actual underlying issues.

That's a possibility, for sure. How do you propose to test that?

Honestly it sounds like an extraordinarily unlikely possibility to me. If it's true, then hopefully the people who were confused will speak up to let us know that and to correct the record.

However, the poll was made as clear and simple as possible, specifically so that these "underlying issues" and complicated alternate options you've been bringing up are simply not relevant to the poll.

Just for example, there's the question of whether dependent reflectors can reasonably be said to have "signal inputs" and "signal outputs" or not. It's not relevant for people to think about that, when they're just answering the simple yes/no question about whether or not they consider the active objects circulating in a p43 Snark loop to be signals.

The odds seem quite good to me that mostly the people who voted on the poll are the people who know something about the subject and wanted to express an opinion on it -- with maybe a few "confused" folks spread evenly between Option 1 and Option 2, so not really affecting the poll's outcome. But let's wait a few weeks longer and see how it all plays out, eh?

[dvgrn]

It still looks to me as if your use in that post requires the "dvgrn-signal" meaning.

It does not. The fact that an [information-theory] signal cannot "be" an active object, does not invalidate the corresponding usage of the word 'signal'. It is just that that ambiguous usage of the word does not invalidate the underlying concept of a signal (moving information), either.

I'm not at all sure that I understand that answer yet (but I would like to).

What I'm getting from the above is that your usage of "signal" in that quote was not a usage that lines up with the information-theory signal definition on the LifeWiki. Is that correct so far?

Exploring Option 1
Let's say someone reads your statement, and then goes to the LifeWiki to look up what you mean by "signal". If I'm understanding your preferences correctly, you want them to read the information-theory definition of "signal" there, and then go to a disambiguation page where they can find the actual meaning that you intended in this case. Have I gotten off the track yet?

That doesn't look like the best option to me (for this specific case that I'm imagining).

Exploring Option 2
Option 2 will make it immediately clear to my hypothetical reader of your post, that "signal" is being used to refer directly to an active object (the G1 glider pair). So far so good.

To try to help other possible readers trying to understand other common uses of "signal", it seems to me to make sense to have a section after the initial Option 2 wording, in the same signal article, that maybe talks a little more about the strict information-theory-only definition of "signal".

I really don't think it's useful to put the strict information-theory definition (or anything else) on a separate disambiguation page. But I suppose that if the strict information-theory-only definition of "signal" ends up shunted off to a separate disambiguation page, I won't really mind: it's not a definition that's very much needed on the LifeWiki.

This is because the strict information-theory-only definition of "signal" is much more in line with everybody's standard real-world concept of "signal". It's not clear why anyone would need to go to the LifeWiki to look that up -- they could just go to Wikipedia (where, as Scorbie has pointed out, the essential ambiguity of the term is also clearly acknowledged in the first paragraph.)

Conversely, users unfamiliar with the CA-specific usage of "signal" are likely to want to consult the LifeWiki, when they see uses like some of yours or most of mine. Usage like that is very common on the forums and in other CA-specific discussions, and so it seems to me that the LifeWiki definition of "signal" should immediately clarify that common usage, rather than deprecating it in any way.

[confocaloid]

From what I can gather, you are focused on words and phrases, and on whether or not those words or phrases are commonly used. (I guess that makes more sense for Life Lexicon, because it is "a lexicon of terms relating to John Horton Conway's Game of Life".)

Unlike Life Lexicon, LifeWiki contains articles about topics or concepts. For example, the article Cellular automaton is supposed to document the concept of cellular automaton (rather than the phrase 'cellular automaton').

The concept of signals is based on the idea of communicating some information/choices/meaning. Probably this is also what you call "everybody's standard real-world concept". The current definition (signal) makes it fairly clear that signals are "communication thing". I think that definition is correct as it stands.

I would agree with adding another paragraph or several paragraphs, separately explaining other common meanings of the word 'signal' and their relation to the concept. But that disambiguation should go after the definition of the concept itself -- it should not be mixed with the definition.

Obviously I disagree with changing the definition of the concept.

[dvgrn]

In the last post I asked a couple of specific questions, to try to understand clearly what you're thinking ("Is that correct so far?" "Have I gotten off the track yet?") You certainly don't have to answer those questions. However, without some confirmation, I really can't guess whether I'm following your arguments correctly.

When I try to summarize your point of view without asking those kinds of questions, I've repeatedly been told I'm mis-stating what you believe, misleading people, etc. I'm finding it really hard to continue this discussion in a useful way, when I do my best to ask relevant questions and they aren't even mentioned in your reply.

From what I can gather, you are focused on words and phrases, and on whether or not those words or phrases are commonly used. (I guess that makes more sense for Life Lexicon, because it is "a lexicon of terms relating to John Horton Conway's Game of Life".)

Unlike Life Lexicon, LifeWiki contains articles about topics or concepts. For example, the article Cellular automaton is supposed to document the concept of cellular automaton (rather than the phrase 'cellular automaton').

Honestly, I don't really see that this theoretical distinction between "words and phrases" vs. "topics and concepts" has much relevance here, especially given the history of the Life Lexicon and LifeWiki.

In 2016 through 2018 a large number of Life Lexicon definitions were copied verbatim to the LifeWiki. The "signal" article was one of those. Nobody found this surprising. That implies to me that it's perfectly okay for the LifeWiki to include definitions of "words and phrases".

If you believe that the LifeWiki has a different purpose from the Life Lexicon, such that it should go into more depth about the topics or concepts than a short Lexicon definition can allow -- then I absolutely agree!

That being the case, let's add to the "signal" article some additional clarification (e.g., the Option 2 text) so that it's absolutely clear that "signal" in a CA context is not constrained to mean just "information-theory signal". That is a really important fact about the CA-specific concept of "signal", that is currently not acknowledged in the definition.

If you want to claim that the CA-specific concept of "signal" can't possibly be extended in this way, then I'll just have to refer you back to Option 2 in the poll. A supermajority of voters currently appears to disagree with you about this.

-- I just think you're stuck on a bad definition of "signal", based on a too-literal reading the short general 2016 definition -- which was copied over verbatim without a whole lot of theoretical analysis or worry about logical consequences, straight from the Life Lexicon. Your continuing confusion on this point is good evidence that the definition of "signal" in a CA context really needs something like the Option-2 update.

[confocaloid]

Is that correct so far?

"That" is misleading, because "that" confuses words with concepts. Existing usage of words or phrases does not invalidate underlying concepts.
The LifeWIki article explains what signals are, and clarifies in several ways the distinction between a signal and a mechanism by which the signal is carried.

Have I gotten off the track yet?

If someone starts by reading that post (out of all things in the linked forum thread "Stable signal converters"), it is more likely that they would wonder what the word means in the thread title, or that they would already know the jargon. Use of the word in my post does not conflict with use of the word in the first post. The first post in that thread clarifies what 'signal' is likely to mean there --

I've maintained an unreasonable interest in these things for a long time -- over a decade by now, it appears. That linked article talks about five interchangeable types of signals, with explicitly constructed stable G-to-X and X-to-G converters.

If we count the *WSSes separately, as we probably should, that was eight stable-circuitry signal types known in 2007 -- glider, LWSS, MWSS, HWSS, Herschel, 2c/3 diagonal wire, swimmer.

Judging by the quoted wording, whoever started the forum thread decided to use the word 'signal' to refer to a signal-carrying object or mechanism. This does not conflict with the existing definition of the concept in the LifeWiki article -- existing usage of words does not invalidate ideas behind those words. The idea is the ability to communicate information.

Further (and more relevant to this discussion), how the word 'signal' is used in that forum thread does not imply anything about how or when the same word should be used in other LifeWiki articles.

Honestly, I don't really see that this theoretical distinction between "words and phrases" vs. "topics and concepts" has much relevance here, especially given the history of the Life Lexicon and LifeWiki.

That is a really important fact about the CA-specific concept of "signal", that is currently not acknowledged in the definition.

I think I already explained earlier in this discussion, why the distinction between the word and the concept is directly relevant.
The ambiguity should be acknowledged separately. Trying to explain how the word is used in different ways by "acknowledging it in the definition" would break the definition.

[confocaloid]

Also,

A supermajority of voters currently appears to disagree with you about this. [...]

"A supermajority of voters" currently appears to me to be confused, because the poll is misleading -- there is no explanation of what are the underlying issues, and several different questions are mixed together. As I already wrote --

The "poll" is misleading. Either of two "options" presents several different issues in combined form as if they were a single issue (and ignores other issues).

Can you see why I might be inclined to think that the poll is not misleading at all, but rather a very useful simplification of the issue?

I honestly wanted to know how people would vote on the exact question that I presented in the poll. I created the poll. Now I have information that I didn't have before.

You might be missing the possibility that what you describe as "a supermajority of the community members who have voted so far" might be people who were confused by the wording in the poll and the "combined options". I think it is likely that people are confused as to what are the actual underlying issues.

For what it's worth, I think you are confused as well, because you wrote that you do not see the relevance of the difference between words and ideas (which I believe is directly relevant) --

Honestly, I don't really see that this theoretical distinction between "words and phrases" vs. "topics and concepts" has much relevance here, especially given the history of the Life Lexicon and LifeWiki.

To me, this continued confusion about whether or not certain issues are relevant, and also continued confusion about which of us is more confused than the other, constitutes good evidence that the current existing long-standing definitions should be kept as they are, and should not be changed in any way now -- not before both of us become sufficiently deconfused to be able to understand what is the way to go.

[dvgrn]

I think I already explained earlier in this discussion, why the distinction between the word and the concept is directly relevant.

Yup, you did. Your explanation was not at all convincing to me, but you definitely did explain it. I'll go read it again now in case I missed something last time around.

... No, I don't think I missed anything. It all looks very familiar. You say, for example, "I think [the LifeWiki] definition is correct as it stands."

I absolutely agree that the definition is technically "correct as it stands" -- as long as I accept the premise that the most important thing to define is the real-world information-theory meaning of "signal". Unfortunately I do not accept that premise. If people insist on reading that real-world information-theory definition literally, as you have, it will cause confusion rather than bringing clarity -- because that interpretation doesn't match existing usage in the CA community nearly often enough. For clarity, we need a CA-specific definition of "signal" instead.

The ambiguity should be acknowledged separately. Trying to explain how the word is used in different ways by "acknowledging it in the definition" would break the definition.

There are cases where this kind of thing is true -- where "dependent" or "wing" or "elbow" mean several completely different unrelated things. Trying to create a single definition in these cases would break the definition.

In my opinion "signal" is not one of those cases. The Option-2 definition is a step in the right direction to put several rather closely related uses of "signal" under a single umbrella. They're currently not under the same "dvgrn-signal" umbrella according to the short Life Lexicon and LifeWiki definition, if those are read too literally. But they've already been under the same umbrella, according to occasional previous usage, by for about a quarter century. The previous usage is definitely very often my own previous usage -- early on I was talking about this stuff a lot more than anybody else was! -- but it's definitely nowhere near all mine. I keep finding more examples every time I look.

What's the Big Idea, Really?
I think the most critically important Big Idea behind the concept of "signal" in a CA context is the idea of being able to identify recognizable active objects or perturbations moving through the Life universe in a repeatable way, through some kind of circuitry or wire or other dvgrn-signal path (including stretches of empty space).

It's a separate question whether any given one of these "signals" (dvgrn-signals) is carrying a bit of information-theory data through the Life universe, or not. That's an exceedingly subtle and non-local question sometimes, and quite often it's simply irrelevant; you can build an entire complex pattern with fifty moving parts, and never once need to think about whether there are "information-theory signals" hiding in it somewhere.

So if we imply to LifeWiki readers that when they see the term "signal", they should generally be looking for abstract information-theory signals that are equivalent to ones and zeroes, can't have a mirror image, etc. ... then they might be confused by a lot of the actual usage of the term.

Side Note
Now, I don't really think that the current definition of "signal" particularly strongly implies any of that abstract information-theory stuff to the average reader. There's nothing in the definition that says it has to be read absolutely literally, or that "signals can't have mirror images", or anything like that. I suspect most of the Option-2 voters are perfectly comfortable with the fact that "this kind of double meaning is commonplace". But I'm happy to patch up the definition a bit, now that I know that at least one person has gotten misled by it.

Judging By Results
Here's one of the big reasons that I'm so convinced that preserving a restricted literal information-theory-only definition of "signal" in the LifeWiki article is an unworkable idea:

Your too-literal interpretation of the current definition makes you say things like "a p43 Snark loop contains no signals".

According to every measurement we've done so far, most people quite simply do not agree with that statement. They can look a p43 Snark loop and see that it uncontestably contains eight things going around and around in it. They know that things that look like that are often called "signals", and that even in the context of closed oscillators like the p43 Snark loop, the things going around are still very often called "signals". It just doesn't make a lot of sense to say that a p43 Snark loop contains "no signals".

If a definition leads to conclusions that don't make sense, it's time to look for a better definition. The current LifeWiki definition of "signal" can apparently be construed such that it's not correct to say that "a p43 Snark loop contains eight signals" -- but adding a sentence can easily fix that.

[confocaloid]

[...] It's not clear why anyone would need to go to the LifeWiki to look that up -- they could just go to Wikipedia [...]

For clarity, we need a CA-specific definition of "signal" instead.

From what I can gather by reading your recent posts, it almost seems like you strongly believe, that a CA-specific definition of some phrase or some concept absolutely has to diverge in some fundamental way from the definition of the corresponding "real-world" concept behind it.

I disagree.
The CA-specific concept of signal is, in fact, aligned with the "real-world" idea of signals as a "communication thing". The existing definition already clarifies that. There is nothing wrong with having that kind of alignment / correspondence. Just because that kind of alignment exists, does not make the LifeWiki article any less useful. It is still useful, as long as it defines the underlying concept (which it currently does).

In fact, it is more helpful when aligned with "real-world" understanding. As long as the CA-specific concept does not fundamentally diverge from the "real-world" concept behind it, things work much better on average for readers who do not (yet) have much CA-related knowledge.

In my opinion "signal" is not one of those cases.

I disagree. I believe the word "signal" is one of cases where an explicit enumeration of different meanings would be helpful.

As long as you use the word 'signal' to mean something that can be present in something like light speed oscillator or an oscillator made out of dependent reflectors, the underlying idea becomes fundamentally different, compared to the existing CA-related concept of signals. There is no movement of information through a dependent reflector functioning in a "dependent reflector loop" oscillator.

I already tried to explain that earlier in this discussion.

I think the most critically important Big Idea behind the concept of "signal" in a CA context is the idea of being able to identify recognizable active objects or perturbations moving through the Life universe in a repeatable way, through some kind of circuitry or wire or other dvgrn-signal path (including stretches of empty space).

I fundamentally disagree. In my view, the "big idea" behind Life-related / CA-related signals is the ability to communicate information (information movement through the universe).

In a "dependent reflector loop" oscillator, there is no communication. Even if you zoom in on a single working dependent reflector and observe as it consumes a never-ending glider stream and produces another never-ending glider stream, there is still no communication of any kind, and hence there are no signals.
Glider loop oscillators made out of non-dependent reflectors, or other engineered oscillators relying on universal technology, are not different in this regard. Neither the p67 Snark loop nor the capped period-256 glider gun contains any signals in it.

Just because dvgrn or anyone else may choose to use the word 'signal' to refer to something that is actually present there somewhere in those oscillators, does not mean that the concept signal is relevant enough to mention it in the corresponding LifeWiki article about the oscillator.

But I'm happy to patch up the definition a bit, now that I know that at least one person has gotten misled by it.

Are you sure you know that? Are you sure that you are not confused yourself (to the point of "completely contradicting what you said before"), and your continued attempts to "patch up the definition" will not cause damage to the understanding of future readers?

You continue to try to extract some meaningful "results" from a "poll" that I believe to be misleading.

I think your attempts to change the existing definition of signals are likely to do even more harm to the community, than those attempts already caused.

[dvgrn]

From what I can gather by reading your recent posts, it almost seems like you strongly believe, that a CA-specific definition of some phrase or some concept absolutely has to diverge in some fundamental way from the definition of the corresponding "real-world" concept behind it.

Yes! I've been trying my best to get this across to you from the beginning of this discussion. In the case of "signal", that is pretty much what I believe.

... I mean, "absolutely has to" is an exaggeration, of course. If the poll had turned out 75%+ in favor of Option 1, for example, I would have immediately known I was wrong about community sentiment on this, and would have stopped my attempts to develop a consensus in favor of Option 2. That was precisely the stated purpose of the poll.

A quick analogy on the importance of corresponding real-world concepts:

The LifeWiki definition of "natural", like many other CA-specific terms, wouldn't be useful at all if it just more or less matched the Wikipedia definition. It needs CA-specific qualifiers to make sense in a CA context.

In deference to your objections, the Option 2 suggestion leaves all of the current wording unchanged, and makes only the minimal adjustment needed to highlight the key CA-specific concept that needs first-paragraph-level acknowledgment.

No doubt there is a clearer wording, but the LifeWiki is a wiki and "signal" is a difficult topic, so it's okay to make gradual improvements -- and Option 2 was enough of a step in the right direction that it currently has supermajority support (however misguided you may think that support is).

There is no movement of information through a dependent reflector functioning in a "dependent reflector loop" oscillator.

I already tried to explain that earlier in this discussion.

There are some subtleties here, so not everyone agrees with you on this exact statement (though everyone certainly sees what you mean by it). Several people have taken issue with the conflation of "information" with "information-theory signals" that you've repeated here.

However, if you had wanted to say instead "There is no movement of confocaloid-signals through a dependent reflector..." then I'm pretty sure no one would disagree with you in the slightest.

If I wanted to use the term "dvgrn-signal" here, I wouldn't say that individual dvgrn-signals "move through the reflector" -- but I would want to be able to say that an uninterrupted stream of input dvgrn-signals is needed to support a dependent reflector.

Long story short, dependent reflectors are a slightly more complicated issue. The way we describe dependent reflectors will be a direct consequence of the solution we choose for the definition of "signal". This is my reason for focusing on the definition of "signal" in the poll.

Are you sure you know that? Are you sure that you are not confused yourself (to the point of "completely contradicting what you said before"), and your continued attempts to "patch up the definition" will not cause damage to the understanding of future readers?

Yup.

I'm certain enough to keep taking steps to move the community toward consensus on this. It's a wiki, after all -- we can always change it again.

I'm glad you linked to that mistake I made, where I got this whole conversation started off on the wrong foot. I'm sorry about that. It was an easy mistake to make, and I corrected it pretty quick once I spent some more time thinking about the problem. I'm quite regularly wrong about things, and try to clearly admit that whenever I notice it. I highly recommend that everyone try being wrong and admitting it now and then, as a very effective antidote for arrogance.

Next Steps
Do you have a plan to produce some fresh evidence that the community is actually somehow supporting your view on this issue, and that (as of this writing) seventeen people are "confused" and at most four people are clear-headedly representing a possible future consensus?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Older quotes from others in the discussion about dependent reflectors aren't going to be too compelling here, because the current poll is strictly about the definition of "signal".

You seem to have a lot more experience than I do with the Wikipedia concept of "consensus". What would you suggest should happen at this point, to avoid the appearance of stonewalling by one very determined proponent of Option 1? Most of the people who voted for Option 1 haven't spoken up yet, in spite of my attempts to encourage them.

Silversmith provided an alternate proposal, to redefine the existing term "drifter" to use in the place of "dvgrn-signal". You added a "like" to that proposal. Do you think that that would be a good solution?

[hotdogPi]

Drifters don't move through empty space.

[b3s23love]

Drifters don't move through empty space.

Seconded!

[confocaloid]

Drifters don't move through empty space.

Seconded!

The current definition of drifter (also in Life Lexicon) states that a drifter is "A perturbation moving within a stable pattern."
That definition does not fundamentally contradict the idea that drifters can move in a vacuum, as long as vacuum is considered a stable pattern.

I think the "simple" requirement of nonempty background does not lead to a helpful distinction. In the reversal of the rule (e.g. B0123478/S01234678), what was previously "a spaceship moving through empty space" becomes "a perturbation moving through non-empty background", but it still behaves in essentially the same way.

You added a "like" to that proposal. Do you think that that would be a good solution?

First, I disagree with your label "redefine" -- it is incorrect. As I mentioned above, the current definition would not require any changes.

I think any wide and consistent use of a single word or phrase to unambiguously refer to a single well-defined concept would be helpful.
(I'm not sure that is feasible in this specific case, though.)

FWIW not relevant to this discussion, but interpreting my "likes" is likely to lead to confusion. There is no communicated information in a "like".
I think this is also true in many other cases for "likes" from other people. The most one can guess in general is that whoever "liked" a post, probably did read the post.

[confocaloid]

The LifeWiki definition of "natural", like many other CA-specific terms, wouldn't be useful at all if it just more or less matched the Wikipedia definition. It needs CA-specific qualifiers to make sense in a CA context.

Although not (directly) relevant to this discussion, I think "Natural" is another LifeWiki page that can be naturally viewed (no pun intended) as a disambiguation page. That page mostly tries to explain use of terms, instead of trying to introduce a single concept.

Long story short, dependent reflectors are a slightly more complicated issue. The way we describe dependent reflectors will be a direct consequence of the solution we choose for the definition of "signal". This is my reason for focusing on the definition of "signal" in the poll.

That introduction of dependent reflectors on LifeWiki will be a consequence of whatever this discussion leads to, is also my reason for mentioning them in my previous post.

As far as I can understand, you believe that reflectors (including dependent reflectors) should be considered as something that fundamentally relies on the concept signal.

I believe that reflectors (including dependent reflectors) do not (and should not) rely on signals. It is simple and natural to introduce reflectors without requiring understanding of signals.
(In fact, in Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction, 3.5 "Glider Loops and Reflectors", reflectors are introduced without relying on signals.)

A reflector is a pattern that can reflect some specific type of spaceship without suffering permanent damage. 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.

Do you have a plan to produce some fresh evidence that the community is actually somehow supporting your view on this issue, and that (as of this writing) seventeen people are "confused" and at most four people are clear-headedly representing a possible future consensus?

I think it would be a more reasonable idea to accept that the "poll" was neither timely nor well-thought-out; any "results" are likely to be incorrect.
It would be better to allow the discussion to continue in the already existing forum threads.

[dvgrn]

The current definition of drifter (also in Life Lexicon) states that a drifter is "A perturbation moving within a stable pattern."
That definition does not fundamentally contradict the idea that drifters can move in a vacuum, as long as vacuum is considered a stable pattern.

I think the "simple" requirement of nonempty background does not lead to a helpful distinction. In the reversal of the rule (e.g. B0123478/S01234678), what was previously "a spaceship moving through empty space" becomes "a perturbation moving through non-empty background", but it still behaves in essentially the same way.

Awesome! I think this is a really clear example where a much-too-literal approach to reading the existing LifeWiki definition is causing you to reach conclusions that almost nobody will agree with.

The very long established definition of "drifter" implies "A perturbation moving within a stable non-empty pattern." The LifeWiki definition doesn't actually say the word "non-empty", just because up to now it's never been necessary to specify that. Adding wording to exclude degenerate cases doesn't improve clarity in general, it just adds clutter -- until there's some evidence that the clarification is needed.

For example, we also don't specify "non-empty" in the definition of wire, because that's clearly a silly degenerate case that nobody would seriously use: "Here we have a glider traveling through a wire made up of empty space". That said, if someone were ever genuinely confused by this, we could easily adjust the definition and add "non-empty", and this probably wouldn't be terribly controversial. The same is true of adding "non-empty" to the "drifter" definition.

However, widening the LifeWiki definition of the existing term "drifter" to allow empty space, and then starting to use "drifter" in a way that no longer reliably matches existing usage, really would constitute significant damage to the current widely accepted meaning of "drifter".

By contrast, widening the LifeWiki definition of the existing term "signal" so that it matches a much wider percentage of existing usage is an improvement, in my view, rather than damage.

Your point about B0123478/S01234678 spaceships seems irrelevant to a discussion of "drifter". Rule-reversal spaceships are still always called "spaceships". I don't think I've ever seen one being called a "drifter", because again that's completely contrary to the widely accepted definition of "drifter" stated above by hotdogPi and b3s23love. I.e., rule-reversal spaceships are a weird case that nobody has ever thought it necessary to explicitly exclude in the definition of "drifter", because nobody has ever tried to use "drifter" that way.

[confocaloid]

The current definition of drifter (also in Life Lexicon) states that a drifter is "A perturbation moving within a stable pattern."
That definition does not fundamentally contradict the idea that drifters can move in a vacuum, as long as vacuum is considered a stable pattern.

First, I disagree with your label "redefine" -- it is incorrect. As I mentioned above, the current definition would not require any changes.

Awesome! I think this is a really clear example where a much-too-literal approach to reading the existing LifeWiki definition is causing you to reach conclusions that almost nobody will agree with.

You are missing the point.

You claimed that there was a proposal to "redefine" the term "drifter".
I replied to that to clarify that "redefine" is an incorrect label -- the actual definition does not require a non-empty background.
And now you are trying to blame me for "too literal" reading.

This is wrong. If a definition does not explicitly require a property, then it does not require that property.

However, widening the LifeWiki definition of the existing term "drifter" [...]
By contrast, widening the LifeWiki definition of the existing term "signal" [...]

Apparently you want to allow one "widening the LifeWiki definition" because of your preferences (specifically, too much focus on documenting existing usage of words and phrases, to the point of ignoring/forgetting other relevant concerns like well-definedness and consistency), but do not want to allow another "widening the LifeWiki definition", again because of your preferences.

This is another example why I think it is too early to jump to any conclusions based on the "results" of your "poll". You are confused.

Based on my experience of participating in this discussion, I believe you are
(a) confused yourself on several relevant issues, and
(b) too biased on these issues to be able to judge how to solve the issues.

Please stop trying to control this discussion. There are sufficiently many CA enthusiasts in this community, to gradually handle any issues in a much more reasonable way than what you were/are doing in this discussion.

[dvgrn]

That introduction of dependent reflectors on LifeWiki will be a consequence of whatever this discussion leads to, is also my reason for mentioning them in my previous post.

As far as I can understand, you believe that reflectors (including dependent reflectors) should be considered as something that fundamentally relies on the concept signal.

Here's a clarification on this point.

I wouldn't say that reflectors fundamentally rely on the concept of "signal", no -- certainly not the information-theory "confocaloid-signal" sense of signal. Confocaloid-signals are completely irrelevant to the local behavior of a reflector.

An independent reflector may be processing dvgrn-signals, or processing active-objects-carrying-confocaloid-signals -- it's impossible to tell by looking at just the reflector, since the behavior is identical in either case. It's very often completely unnecessary to spend time thinking about the distinction when building a pattern -- which is why trying to insist on the information-theory-only definition just doesn't seem at all workable in practice.

However, as you say, there are consequences of the discussion of "signal". If the consensus is that the definition of "signal" in a CA context absolutely does not imply that the signal must be carrying an unencumbered information-theory bit of information, then that implies that it's reasonable to say things like this:

- signals (dvgrn-signals) are passing through independent reflectors when they're in operation;
- signals (dvgrn-signals) are needed as inputs to dependent reflectors, and are produced as outputs.

Over the last twenty years, it has fairly regularly been convenient to say things like this -- not "absolutely required", no, but uses along these lines have never been controversial before this discussion, and have happened a lot. I think it would be great if they could go back to being uncontroversial.

"Signal" is the simplest general term that's in common use for talking about inputs and outputs of dependent reflectors and conduits and more complex circuitry -- where I can't always say "glider" accurately because it's too specific (the input signal isn't always a glider) and I don't want to say "active object" because that's too vague (doesn't imply circuitry). "Spaceship" is usually unnecessarily general for reflectors and would usually be incorrect for conduits -- but "signal" works just fine.

I think it would be a more reasonable idea to accept that the "poll" was neither timely nor well-thought-out; any "results" are likely to be incorrect.

Please find one person besides yourself who agrees with this sentence (and ask them to please state that agreement). At this point it would be really useful for me to hear the opinion of such a person, directly from them.

If no such person can be found, I'd advise abandoning this line of argument. It is completely possible that you are still right about everything, of course -- but if so, the consensus may still be that the community wants to go ahead and do the absolute wrong thing in this case, and just see how that works.

[confocaloid]

I think it would be a more reasonable idea to accept that the "poll" was neither timely nor well-thought-out; any "results" are likely to be incorrect.

Please find one person besides yourself who agrees with this sentence. [...]

If I follow your "advice", then I will be blamed for doing exactly that.

For some reason, instead of letting this discussion to evolve on its own, you are trying to control it, by creating new threads and actively participating in discussion.

My "advice" (for what it is worth) at this point would be what I already wrote --

It would be better to allow the discussion to continue in the already existing forum threads.

Based on my experience of participating in this discussion, I believe you are
(a) confused yourself on several relevant issues, and
(b) too biased on these issues to be able to judge how to solve the issues.

Please stop trying to control this discussion. There are sufficiently many CA enthusiasts in this community, to gradually handle any issues in a much more reasonable way than what you were/are doing in this discussion.

[hotdogPi]

The "colored turing machine" thread was inactive, and you bumped it, confocaloid.

[confocaloid]

The "colored turing machine" thread was inactive, and you bumped it, confocaloid.

That is correct, but that was unintentional. I wanted to cross-post an example of wording to this thread and mistakenly bumped the original thread. Regardless, my post was already moved here.

[dvgrn]

For some reason, instead of letting this discussion to evolve on its own, you are trying to control it, by creating new threads and actively participating in discussion.

"Control" is a loaded term. Creating new threads and actively participating in discussion constitutes "trying to control the discussion"? In what way is this different from what you've been doing, in holding up your half of the debate? I've been trying to be on my best behavior in all of this -- but of course anyone can make mistakes sometimes, as we've established.

I've been thinking of what I'm doing as "trying to move the discussion forward", to reach a consensus community decision on this issue.

I claim only equal rights with you in this discussion. I'm not doing anything that you couldn't equally well do (except moving that one post that you accidentally created in the wrong place, of course!) I have never threatened any moderator action related to this discussion.

I am simultaneously a moderator and a member of this community. As a member of the community, I honestly believe I'm allowed to create new threads and actively participate in discussion.

Only one person has expressed dissatisfaction with any of my recent actions in "moving this discussion forward". I haven't heard any complaints on the way the poll was set up, for example, except a number of repeated criticisms from you.

I can ask again if that would be helpful. This is a question for anyone who is willing to answer. @Anyone:

Was the creation of the poll a problem in some way that I'm not seeing?

Anyone who has been dissatisfied but silent, please rest assured that I'd really just like to understand what might have been wrong with the poll. I promise not to ban anyone for, you know, preferring Option 1, or telling me that I remind them of Dr. Evil, or anything like that. Option-1 voters are actually much more interesting to me -- sorry, Option-2 voters! -- because I already understand the reasons for choosing Option 2.

Both the "signal" poll and the "dependent reflector" poll seemed really positive and useful to me. They provided good rough indicators of a clear community preference in each case, with no indication of any deeply hidden "real" community opinion in opposition the vote results.

@confocaloid, I can post this question elsewhere, like maybe on the poll thread, if you think that this thread isn't the right place for it.

[TYCF]

Why is there no yeast in
https://conwaylife.com/ref/lexicon/lex_y.htm?

[hotdogPi]

Why is there no yeast in
https://conwaylife.com/ref/lexicon/lex_y.htm?

It was mentioned in Lifeline Volume 4 once and that's it. It's not really useful, as it's not a common predecessor nor the minimal one.

[dvgrn]

You claimed that there was a proposal to "redefine" the term "drifter".
I replied to that to clarify that "redefine" is an incorrect label -- the actual definition does not require a non-empty background.
And now you are trying to blame me for "too literal" reading.

It would be really nice if you could try a bit harder to avoid loaded terminology like "blame". It would also work better if you could ask more questions instead of stating such enormously confident-sounding opinions based on unstated assumptions. It seems to me that this has been happening a lot.

Here you seem to be assuming that when I talked about the very long established definition of "drifter" I somehow meant the most literal possible way to interpret the current LifeWiki definition.

What I actually said was the following paragraph. In that paragraph, I tried very hard to lay out exactly why it doesn't work to read the current LifeWiki definition as literally as you're doing. You seem to have taken the first sentence out of context, without understanding the rest of it.

The very long established definition of "drifter" implies "A perturbation moving within a stable non-empty pattern." The LifeWiki definition doesn't actually say the word "non-empty", just because up to now it's never been necessary to specify that. Adding wording to exclude degenerate cases doesn't improve clarity in general, it just adds clutter -- until there's some evidence that the clarification is needed.

Do you see on a second reading how I couldn't have been talking about just the LifeWiki definition? I specifically say that the LifeWiki definition doesn't mention the word "non-empty", because it's never been necessary to do that before.

What I'm talking about is the community's very long established definition of "drifter", not the LifeWiki's literal definition.

There are no doubt dozens of Life Lexicon and LifeWiki definitions that do not mention all of the degenerate cases and weird exceptions that they would have to exclude to make a perfectly logical and complete definition (in the cases where that is even possible).

I gave another such example in my post: a wire is a non-empty pattern, but the LifeWiki definition doesn't say that it's non-empty. But even though the "wire" definition doesn't include "non-empty", it is not a reasonable conclusion that the (not-just-on-LifeWiki) commonly accepted definition of "wire" can sensibly be expanded to include stretches of empty space.

Along very much the same lines, the claim that the (not-just-on-LifeWiki) definition of "drifter" can reasonably be extended to include drifters traveling through empty space ... is based on a highly literal reading of the current LifeWiki definition, as I mentioned before, and almost nobody will agree to allow that extension.

I wouldn't say that I'm "blaming" you for getting this wrong. I'm trying to let you know, as politely as possible, that you're getting this wrong -- and that you will become a much less controversial LifeWiki editor, and will get into a lot fewer lost-cause arguments like this one about "drifter", once you give up on reading definitions like this so extremely literally in the face of opposition from multiple people.

[confocaloid]

Here you seem to be assuming that when I talked about the very long established definition of "drifter" I somehow meant the most literal possible way to interpret the current LifeWiki definition.

As far as I can tell, the most sensible way to interpret your phrase 'very long established definition of "drifter"', is to read it as referring to a written definition, presumably in Life Lexicon and/or LifeWiki.

Life Lexicon: ( https://conwaylife.com/ref/lexicon/lex_d.htm#drifter )

:drifter A perturbation moving within a stable pattern. Dean Hickerson has written a search program to search for drifters, with the hope of finding one which could be moved around a track. Because drifters can be very small, they could be packed more tightly than Herschels, and so allow the creation of oscillators of periods not yet attained, and possibly prove that Life is omniperiodic. Hickerson has found a number of components towards this end, but it has proved difficult to change the direction of movement of a drifter, and so far no complete track has been found. However, Hickerson has had success using the same program to find eaters with novel properties, such as sparking eaters and the ones shown in diuresis.

LifeWiki: ( https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?titl ... did=120054 )

A drifter is a perturbation moving within a stable pattern.

Dean Hickerson has written a program to search for drifters, with the hope of finding one which could be moved around a track. Because drifters can be very small, they could be packed more tightly than Herschels, and so allow the creation of oscillators of periods not yet attained, and possibly prove that Life is omniperiodic. Hickerson has found a number of components towards this end, but it has proved difficult to change the direction of movement of a drifter, and so far no complete track has been found. However, Hickerson has had success using the same search program to find eaters with novel properties, such as that used in diuresis.

dr, the search program used to find drifters, can also find oscillators. Most oscillators with period 10 or greater with dense stators and small rotors were found this way, including 55P10, p11 domino sparker, 66P13, all three known base p17s, and Merzenich's p18. The highest period found with dr that doesn't rely on symmetry, flipping, or phase-shifting is 18 (Merzenich's p18); 19 is possible, but specific periods can't be directly searched for.

Apparently, in this case both LifeWiki and Life Lexicon give essentially the same definition. This definition does not, in fact, require a non-empty background.

TL,DR: if your phrase 'very long established definition of "drifter"' even means anything, then it has to mean a written definition, and neither LifeWiki nor Life Lexicon support your claim.