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Magic: the Gathering Is Turing Complete
TsukiKage writes "A 50-card M:tG combo for four players is demonstrated that is used to construct a simple Turing machine, performing arbitrary computations just by following the rules of Magic and card text thereafter."
I guess that's why you're here.
...an XKCD comic in the near future.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
A use for Carnival of Souls.
Who in their right mind would play such obvious trash?
Surprisingly, lots of people.
People pull knifes on each other over Magic in my hood.
That's why we're all here, right?
Actually, I only ever played one game of Magic; it must have been in 1996.
There is a group of guys at my workplace who do it every day on their lunch hour.
And not a one of them would understand this story.
Like we /.ers are to talk about nerds or geekiness. Half of us would install a toaster in our cars just so we could have a toaster to install linux on while stuck in traffic. Yeesh.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Now this is truly "News for Nerds"
Speaking of, what the hell happened to the motto? When did that happen?
This guy didn't just earn his nerd card, he earned a nerd obelisk in his front yard.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
...does it run linux?
My thoughts in order:
- Have I got the cards to do this?
- What cards could I substitute to achieve the same thing?
- Could I optimize or simplify this and reduce the number of required cards?
- Do *really* I want to sit down and figure this out?
- Could I simulate this in one of the many (open source) mtg cardgame engines?
I don't think that this is valid.
1) "...following the rules of Magic"
2) "At any time, three Teysas are in play"
Back when Legends were originally released, you could only have one Legend card in play at a time. If another player summoned them, the previous Legend card had to be destroyed. Has that rule changed?
... because it's kind of a pointless exercise. After all, Conway's "Life" game was turing complete, and that had like, what? Maybe 3 rules?
This guy didn't just earn his nerd card, he earned a nerd obelisk in his front yard.
That sounds like it could be flavor text on a magic card . .
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
I dont get it. In the "cards" section, a lot of them have had their text "hacked" to read something that benefits the machine. Since the cards have changed, this should be titled "Game with rules like MTG but using cards specific to my needs is Turing complete" Unless "hacked" is some new term in this game that's been dramatically altered since I played in HS.
Do you realize what this means?
Given sufficient time and mana, we could simulate a game of Magic within a game of Magic!
Vaguely related
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
It's only fair to point that this article was generated out of this question on Draw3Cards (Disclaimer: I'm the owner of D3C)
MTG is cool and all....but it's also one of the filthiest money making schemes around. If the cards were freely available, it would take most of the venom out of peoples sails.
Web design, geeks suck at it
OMG you sound like my web design teacher. Is that you? Shed fail you if the colors clashed.
There *îs* a card for changing the colors in the text, and the guy's using it (and a second one to change creature type). The card modification is thus done according to the rules.
In fact, almost any magic effect in MtG is a change in the initial rules, so that's Magic for you
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I don't know about you, but today I feel powerful.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Lost Chain? Is that you?
Any sufficiently advanced technologyis indistinguishable from Magic.
When Linux runs on Dungeons & Dragons, THEN you'll see a truly cosmic nerdgasm; a sight to behold......okay, maybe not.
Table-ized A.I.
Fuck this game, I'm going back to something simple. Where's that astrophysics book?
well there's an 8-bit processor in minecraft... http://boingboing.net/2010/11/12/working-8-bit-cpu-in.html
sag
It's not fair that Minecraft gets all the geek love. And in-game programming devices.
That makes me want to see the game "Mornington Crescent: The Gathering".
you can make Turing complete also Yu-Gi-Ho, Scopa and even Monopoly.
Anyway, next week I'll demonstrate that SlashDot is Turing complete and NP-hard at the same time.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Use a MTG Turing Machine to create a computer running Minecraft, then use that implementation of Minecraft to create a MTG Turing Machine simulator.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Dwarf Fortress did it first.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Web design, geeks suck at it
OMG you sound like my web design teacher. Is that you? Shed fail you if the colors clashed.
Good - I don't want to be blinded when I view a website.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
It must be tough to go outside where colors can "clash" all the time.
I see what you did there.
Are you immune to chromostereopsis? I know I'm not.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Apparently you are if you can play Magic
Brilliant people doing useless things.
But enough about chess.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
quote | write woman ttyear1
touch woman
finger woman
mount woman
init 1
It is not perfect though; overuse may lead to resource depletion and/or dependency hell.
Dwarf Fortress did it first with diabolical machinations dreamt up by fell craftsdwarves whose infernal machines are powered by the blood of kittens. No, literally, THE BLOOD OF KITTENS. I've seen perpetual motion water wheels with blood as the medium and catsplosions are a common method of pest control. The founts of blood splattering into the throne room where the dark emperor sits and laughs are merely a side benefit. Using pressure plates to trigger floodgates leads to all sorts of possibilites. Dark horrible possibilities.
Linux runs on Dungeons & Dragons
Hey, DM, can my time-traveling iron golem be running Linux?
Do people not understand that traditional RPGs have an open format which allows you to do anything you can think of? Are people so stuck in their box that if it's not in the rulebook/list of buttons/daily powers that the action is impossible? This is the reason I play D&D in an age of ubiquitous computing and limitless processing. No amount of rules can cover the breadth of a human's imagination.
Since you're also posting, I guess that means it took one to know one, and my reply here at Slashdot does only to confirm the validity of my accusation.
It gets better! Because the behavior of the underlying hardware in a Turing machine is considered axiomatic and unfailing, the following M:tG CR sections:
104.4b If a game that’s not using the limited range of influence option (including a two-player game) somehow enters a “loop” of mandatory actions, repeating a sequence of events with no way to stop, the game is a draw. Loops that contain an optional action don’t result in a draw.
716.1b Occasionally the game gets into a state in which a set of actions could be repeated indefinitely (thus creating a “loop”). In that case, the shortcut rules can be used to determine how many times those actions are repeated without having to actually perform them, and how the loop is broken.
716.3 Sometimes a loop can be fragmented, meaning that each player involved in the loop performs an independent action that results in the same game state being reached multiple times. If that happens, the active player (or, if the active player is not involved in the loop, the first player in turn order who is involved) must then make a different game choice so the loop does not continue.
mean that this M:tG Turing machine solves the halting problem! The consequences of the fact that, without the halting problem, a Turing machine would never have been described are left as an exercise for the reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYuF3T7s7XY
Apprentice gave me some error about couldn't open Plains.jpg, then repeated "Send buffer full, try again later" and then crashed on my first attempt to play a game. Second attempt I got into a game, but when I drew 7 cards it gave "List index (59) out of bounds." Interface still sucks, you have to know all the commands and all the rules of the game to play it (compared to the commercial M:tG games, which suck for other reasons, but at least they help you with the rules)
sig? uhh, umm, ok
*yawn* Oh, another complex system that can be used to implement a Turing machine? Call me when someone builds a bunch of them in Minecraft, codes a javascript interpreter, and then runs a javascript-based emulation of x86 machines running in a beowulf cluster.
So I started reading that article, until I got to the point where they used the UK spelling of color (colour). At that point, I just thought "meh why bother" and left wikipedia.
I can see it now (on YouTube): Attack Of The British 'U's!
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun