Grey Goo (Hollerith Edition)

 She's a spam bot from 1891.

This basic version of the game is admittedly a bit monotonous as it only has two cards.  This is to avoid assigning any symbols which we might consider software.   Think of this as a software-less computer.

I have my philosopher friend and collaborator busy working on a definition of what IS is.  For now, take my word that what IS, exists and that which ISN'T, doesn't exist.  This is not symbolism at any level.  Don't try to go all soft and philosophical on me, the cards don't exist either.

*Update: My philosopher has indeed confirmed that that which IS is that which ISN'T isn't. 

Let's just get to it and play Grey Goo!

The Rules

The cards

Game play

Shuffle the deck. Draw a card from the top of the deck and play it, repeat until all cards in the deck are exhausted.

Post game analysis

Okay, that was rather unexciting, but you've got so much to live for!  You've got a hand full of “To be” cards.  There's a discard pile of “No to be” cards, but they were entropy.  They never were any way!

Flashback to 1889, a man named Herman Hollerith filed an US Patent on the “Art of Compiling Statistics”. Some people may recognise Hollerith as the re-inventor of the punch card. The machine Hollerith marketed the following year was called a Tabulating Machine and had a peripheral device which he called a Sorter.   It's the Sorter that we are interested in for now.

Primal Assembler

It was simply a mail slot with a door that would open based on the presents of a hole (the analogues make themselves up) in a punched card. The file clerk would then drop the mercury soaked punched cards into the mail slot. Later Hollerith went completely insane from mercury poisoning (I made that part up) and created a company called IBM.

Nice hat there Herman. Got Mercury?

So, how do we turn this into the Turing-complete computer we know today?

Well, we assign some symbols. The instance we do this, a universe of first-order logic pops into existence. 

This is foreshadowing.

Where did it come from?  I don't know, turtles?!  I have my philosopher working on the problem.  I'll let you know what he comes up with.

***Update:  It has been confirmed by the philosopher!  Turtles, through and through! 

*Stay tuned for the next edition of Grey Goo where we'll assign some symbols and busy ourselves with filling space with turtles.