Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles
9 comments
·December 9, 2025recursive
It seems the sand only spills up and to the left.
ggm
Isn't this single frame state of a classic cellular automata? Note, not "just" because I mean no disrespect. I don't understand how this differs from Conway's life other than nuances of the live or die rule.
gsf_emergency_6
CGL doesn't have the scale invariance ("fractality") of ASM. ASM criticality is stable and persistent. "fractal life on edge"?
what that looks like
ggm
So that gets to how it differs, but it doesn't say its not a cellular automata. It could say "it's a cellular automata with different rules"
gsf_emergency_6
It is a cellular automata distinguished by commutativity. You used CGL as the basis for comparison, that's highly nonAbelian.
According to Wolfram (& I agree :), everything is a cellular automaton, so comparing to CGL made more sense to me.
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skeltoac
Now I want to redo a bathroom. Good job, writer!
Very related (yet idiotically titled, as always) veritasium video https://youtu.be/HBluLfX2F_k?si=6lVPLvJNc2YH_4go