On this episode of ID The Future, Robert Marks and Winston Ewert, both of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, discuss three of their recently published papers dealing with evolutionary informatics, algorithmic specified complexity and how information makes evolution work. This is the second of three segments.

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Conway’s Game of Life is played on a rectangular grid. Cells live or die depending on the cells that surround them. Hobbyists have designed highly complex and interesting patterns using Conway’s four simple rules of birth, death and survival. Patterns include oscillators, spaceships and glider guns. Dr. Winston Ewert explains how the theory of algorithmic specified complexity can be applied to measure, in bits, the degree to which these cellular automata life forms are designed. The discussion centers around the peer-reviewed journal article:

Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “Algorithmic Specified Complexity in the Game of Life,” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, Volume 45, Issue 4, April 2015, pp. 584-594 DOI: 10.1109/TSMC.2014.2331917

The paper is available online here: http://robertmarks.org/REPRINTS/2015_AlgorithmicSpecifiedComplexityInTheGameOfLife.pdf