For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.

Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either “alive” or “dead”. Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.

For example, if a cell is “alive” but has less than 2 “alive” neighbors it “dies” by under-population. If the cell is “alive” and has more than three “alive” neighbors it “dies” from over-population, etc.

Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.

It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles… life.

There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!

      • @treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        Frequency hopping as I understand it, is just multiple transceivers agreeing to cycle through different previously agreed upon frequencies to communicate. I don’t get the music analogy.

        • @spclagntdanazoeEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          So if you consider that different notes of music are different frequencies of sound, each radio frequency “hopped to” would be a different note on a piano being played on either end of the signal.

          From Wikipedia: “Antheil and Lamarr developed the idea of using frequency hopping: in this case using a player piano roll to randomly change the signal sent between the control center and torpedo at short bursts within a range of 88 frequencies on the spectrum (88 black and white keys are on a piano keyboard). The specific code for the sequence of frequencies would be held identically by the controlling ship and in the torpedo. This basically encrypted the signal, as it was impossible for the enemy to scan and jam all 88 frequencies because this would have required too much power. Antheil would control the frequency-hopping sequence using a player-piano mechanism, which he had earlier used to score his Ballet Mécanique.”