Reversing Conway’s Game of Life

Jonathan Goetz

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The Rules of the Game

• 1 living neighbor = cell dies• 2 living neighbors = cell maintains• 3 living neighbors = cell lives• 4-8 living neighbors = cell dies

• Many states share descendants• Some states have no ancestors• Some states are their own ancestors• Information is lost

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In Reverse?

Challenges

• Loss of information prevents traditional back calculation of initial state

• The problem itself maps rather easily to a 400 input and 400 output MLP pattern classification which is applied recursively.

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Details

• The basic structure is a multilayered set of MLPs which rescales the result to a range of 0-1 before reapplying the same MLP in order to approximate the input layout.

• Initial attempts to create a variable depth training weighting were not successful.

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Status

• Initial attempts at rewriting the training process for between 1-5 levels of difference unsuccessful.

• Instead implementing this by converting every multi-generational training data point into multiple 1 generation steps.

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