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lantunes / cellpylib

A library for working with Cellular Automata, for Python.
https://cellpylib.org
Apache License 2.0
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Pattern Classification #35

Open fingersnail opened 6 months ago

fingersnail commented 6 months ago

In A New Kind of Science, cellular automata are divided into four classes, class 1 to class 4. How can we use the program to determine which class the behavior of an automaton belongs to?

lantunes commented 6 months ago

As far as I understand, there isn't a precise, universally accepted definition of each class. The classification of cellular automata (CA) into Wolfram's four classes is somewhat subjective. There are, in fact, borderline cases of CA that do not fit squarely into a single class (see here for examples). For this reason, there isn't a straightforward way to write a program to determine which class a CA belongs to.