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ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
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Algorithmic Specified Complexity Part II: Application to Conway’s Game of Life

Episode
904
Guest
Winston Ewert
Duration
00:13:15
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Audio File (18.2 mb)
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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.

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: https://robertmarks.org/REPRINTS/2015_AlgorithmicSpecifiedComplexityInTheGameOfLife.pdf

Winston Ewert

Senior Fellow, Senior Research Scientist, Software Engineer
Winston Ewert is a software engineer, intelligent design researcher, and Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley Center on Natural and Artificial Intelligence. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from Trinity Western University, a Master’s Degree from Baylor University in Computer Science, and a PhD from Baylor University in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His specializes in computer simulations of evolution, specified complexity, information theory, and the common design of genomes. He is a Senior Research Scientist at Biologic Institute, a Senior Researcher at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, and a Fellow of the Bradley Center.
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specified complexity