Conways game of life as an analogue to a habitable world Livingness beyond the biological

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Conway's Game of Life exhibits uniquely lifelike behavior among cellular automata, using three quantitative tests rooted in brain theory and information measures, suggesting it as a nonbiological analogue to habitable worlds.

Contribution

The paper introduces three quantitative tests based on brain and information theories to identify lifelike behavior in cellular automata, highlighting Conway's Game of Life as an outlier.

Findings

Conway's Game of Life passes all three lifelike behavior tests.

The tests successfully distinguish Conway's automaton from other cellular automata.

This approach links lifelike qualities to nonbiological systems, like habitable worlds.

Abstract

Conways Game of Life is a cellular automaton noted for its rich, complex, and emergent behavior, which seems qualitatively lifelike it exists within a wider space of different rule-sets of cellular automata none of which have been found to display behaviors that seem as rich as Conways selected example We present here a set of three quantitative tests for lifelike behavior based on the critical brain theory Shannons theory of information entropy and integrated information theory all of which are successfully able to select Conways Game of Life as an outlier within this set which is a nonbiological analogue to the selection of a habitable planet or universe among a wider space of similar settings that cannot support the same kinds of living systems