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[–] 58 points 2 months ago* (4 children)

I had to double check but this iteration (lel) of the comic is over 13 years old.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1o1x2y/move/

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  • [–] 26 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    I don't get it. What is this referring to?

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  • [–] 64 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

    Conway's Game of Life.

    It's an early example of a "world" simulated by applying simple rules to a board with grids. Black cells die, idle, or reproduce based on these rules, and it results in interesting yet predictable behavior of some clusters. Some shapes/clusters were recognized as behaving in a particular way when the "game" starts.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    Fun fact - i bet you already know but for any others looking - its possible to use these shapes to create "a computer" that itself runs the game, which can run a copy within itself, which can also run a copy and so on and so on forever

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, the rules of Conway's Game of Life is Turing Complete.

    The glider shape (the thing moving diagonally out of the window in this meme) can be created non-destructively by a glider gun (another shape that creates gliders), which can be controlled using stored pixels in another configuration within the glider gun, including taking in input from other gliders, such that the whole thing can loop and do everything necessary to be a universal Turing machine. Not super efficiently, but it will still do the things that Turing machines can do, given enough cycles.

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  • [+] -34 points 2 months ago* (6 children)

    of course you don't.

    it's just illustrating why math is useless beyond the basics. this is something that every 6th grader figures out on their own but is then lectured by math nerds on how wrong they are. the same sorts of people who insist that we'll leave the solar system sometime in the next 34093840348 years because of math.

    the same people who design doors on a tesla that can't be opened in normal circumstances and roast passengers in raging infernos.

    that's all math, and none of it it funny unless you're laughing at math.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    The funny thing about this comment is that, having read the other comments, I know that you’re extrapolating ridiculous things about a field of study that helps enable modern life from a simple game. But if I hadn’t read them, I would still know that you’re extrapolating ridiculous things about a field of study that enables modern life, but I would also still be wondering what the hell these Tetris looking squares have to do with anything! You failed to even address the question you’re responding to!

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago

    You got me. The nerd in me can't stop laughing.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    Conway, is that you?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    Life, uhhh, finds a way.

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