Lindstrom 1 Nathan W.

Lindstrom Professor Strozier Minds and Machines July 22, 2010 Deterministic Systems and Unpredictable Results If we ask ourselves, what were the decisions we made ten years ago which led to us being where we are now, can we ever accurately answer that question? Or to put it in a different timeframe, can we answer the question given the decisions we made today, can we predict how the future will be affected? Most people would probably answer maybe to the first, and no to the second. The reason most people would answer the second question in the negative is that we understand, on a fairly instinctual level, that while todays decisions and actions can and do have an impact on our future, spelling out the exact nature of the impact is nigh on impossible. The reason for this future unpredictability is not something amorphous like the future is hazy or only god knows the future, but rather, that life is a formal system where deterministic actions yield unpredictable results. To better understand this statement, let us examine a famous formal system aptly named The Game of Life and invented in 1970 by the mathematician John Conway. It neatly serves as a description for the external phenomena after which it is named. The Game of Life can use an infinite two-dimensional plane which is divided into equilateral squares, or cells. Each of these cells may be in one of two states: alive, or dead. Living cells are typically colored, while dead cells are not. Cells, alive and dead, make up the alphabet of this system. The grammar of this system is remarkably straightforward: (a) any live

Lindstrom 2 cell with less than two neighbors dies; (b) any live cell with greater than three neighbors dies; (c) any live cell with exactly two or three neighbors continues living; and (d) any dead cell with exactly three live neighboring cells comes to life. These rules are applied once, to every cell, per generation or time tick. Note that there is no randomness in this grammar; the rules are both succinct and must be consistently applied. The only unpredictability comes in the axiom of the system; when selecting the initial cells to be alive and those to be dead any and all combinations (or patterns) are permitted. Given the aforementioned elements of this formal system, we can now conclude that The Game of Life is a deterministic system, as no randomness is permitted in the development of future states within the formal system. Furthermore, as the grammatical rules of The Game of Life consider only the present state when deciding how the next state will appear, and at no time depend upon past states (that is, this system has no memory) The Game of Life is also a Markov Chain. To illustrate these claims in action, consider the following. Lets assume the following axiom for a Game of Life played on a 5x5 grid:
<3 <3 =3 <3 <3 <3 =3 >3 =3 <3 =3 >3 >3 >3 =3 <3 =3 >3 =3 <3 <3 <3 =3 <3 <3

To help us see what happens, the grammar for the system has been included on a cell-bycell basis (also, living cells are dark, while dead cells are light in color.) Suppose we wish to arrive at a final formal proof that looks like this:

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<3 >3 =3 >3 <3

>3 >3 >3 >3 >3

=3 >3 <3 >3 =3

>3 >3 >3 >3 >3

<3 >3 =3 >3 <3

To answer the question of is the above formal proof possible, it turns out that we must apply our rules of grammar to each new axiom in a recursive manner until we either arrive at the desired formal proof or reach a different formal proof which negates the one which we desire. In other words, there is no way to jump from the starting axiom to the final axiom using any conceivable way; that is, there exists no function f such that inputting one axiom yields another that to the axiom produced by applying the rules of grammar. This means that to arrive at our desired formal proof we must recursively apply our grammar, like thus:
<3 <3 =3 <3 <3 <3 =3 >3 =3 <3 =3 >3 >3 >3 =3 <3 =3 >3 =3 <3 <3 <3 =3 <3 <3

<3 <3 =2 <3 <3

<3 =2 =3 =2 <3

=2 =3 >3 =3 =2

<3 =2 =3 =2 <3

<3 <3 =2 <3 <3

<3 =3 =3 =3 <3

=3 >3 >3 >3 =3

=3 >3 >3 >3 =3

=3 >3 >3 >3 =3

<3 =3 =3 =3 <3

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<3 =2 =2 =2 <3 =2 >3 =3 >3 =2 =2 =3 <3 =3 =2 =2 >3 =3 >3 =2 <3 =2 =2 =2 <3

<3 >3 =3 >3 <3

>3 >3 >3 >3 >3

=3 >3 <3 >3 =3

>3 >3 >3 >3 >3

<3 >3 =3 >3 <3

Now that weve seen that it is impossible to look ahead by more than a single generation and predict an outcome, lets generalize this and ask the following question:

After 100 generations, to what axiom will the above axiom have transformed? The good news is we can find out; the bad news is that to find out, we must recursively apply our rules of grammar to each new axiom for a total of a hundred generations. This means that given a random starting axiom this deterministic system will yield a random result, a result which is unpredictable at all generations save the 99th generation, as that generation immediately precedes our final axiom. As the name of this formal system implies, The Game of Life closely mirrors real life, in that despite being a deterministic formal system results are entirely unpredictable. To find out

Lindstrom 5 what the 100th generation of a Game of Life looks like, you must play the game; and to find out what your life will be like in ten years you must live those years.

Lindstrom 6 Works Cited Berlekamp, E. R., John H. Conway and R.K. Guy. Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. London: A. K. Peters, 2001. Casti, John L. Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of Science. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1990. Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1991. Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 2009. Rendell, Paul. A Turing Machine in Conway's Game of Life. 12 January 2005. 20 July 2010 <http://rendell-attic.org/gol/tm.htm>. Rucker, Rudy. Infinity and the Mind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.