The Quanta Podcast What We Learn From Running ‘Life’ in Reverse
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Oct 21, 2025 
George Musser, a science journalist and contributing writer for Quanta Magazine, dives into the intriguing world of cellular automata and complexity engineering. He discusses how simple rules can create intricate patterns, drawing parallels to biological systems. Musser shares his personal history with Conway's Game of Life and explores the challenges of inverting automata. The conversation highlights innovations in training neural cellular automata, with potential applications in biology, regeneration, and technology. A fascinating peek into the future of complex systems!
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Early Hands-On Game Of Life Experience
- George Musser reminisced about playing the Game of Life on checkers boards as a child and later coding it on a 256-byte kit computer.
- He watched simple patterns evolve into complex behaviors despite very limited computing power.
Local Rules Produce Global Complexity
- Cellular automata use local rules on a grid so global complexity can emerge from local interactions.
- You only look a few cells out, yet massive emergent patterns arise across the whole grid.
Deep Learning Solves The Reverse Design Problem
- Inverting cellular automata to design rules from a desired outcome is extremely hard by hand.
- Deep learning enables automating that inverse problem so you can design rules that grow specific patterns.
