This puzzle took me three years and required thinking in 3721 dimensions

Video Description

Visit https://brilliant.org/alphaphoenix/ to start your free 30-day trial, and get 20% off a premium annual subscription! Welcome back, and I hope you enjoy this mess of a three-year project… It turns out backing up in a cellular automaton can be an insanely difficult problem. This started as a "play button" project, but turned into an obsession. I recently came to the conclusion that there's no long-term winning this game (it has been shown to be NP hard, so I don't feel that bad) but AGH it should be easier than it is! Join me in this video as I dive through the much fabled Game of Life, take a hike through a very strange space, and organize a dinner party. It's going to be a great time. Check out the second channel with bonus content and Q&A videos! https://www.youtube.com/@BetaPhoenixChannel Special thanks to my top Patreon supporters! birdiesnbritts John Sosa Trustham Vladimir Shklovsky Aloysius Sparglepartz Jason Whatley Lohann Paterno Coutinho Ferreira Jeffrey Mckishen nothings Eugene Pakhomov Glenn Willen R520 Nick F Mirko Rener Chris Connett Tyler Filla Miles Freeman Benjamin Manns MPG Seth Reuter Danny Thomas Toby T Lucy Fur tiaz Chris Duvarney Nick Wage John T big bonus points to Patreon supporter david.antos for very patiently teaching me about complexity classes! https://www.patreon.com/AlphaPhoenix Media Credits: I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...) http://ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626 E's Jammy Jams - The Entertainer YouTube Music License Silent Partner - Pink Lemonade YouTube Music License Chapters: 0:00 Conway's Game of Life 3:04 Playing GoL in reverse is hard 6:56 How to think in more dimensions 15:55 Drawing maps (both real and configurational) 19:33 The failure of gradient ascent 23:16 SAT solvers (dark CS magic) 28:54 Rephrasing the question and getting results 34:22 Brilliant.org