Concept
Determinism
The property of a rule whose next state is a function of the present one, with nothing left to chance.
Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.
A difference too small to draw
Two starting points a ten-thousandth apart, under the same rule, with nothing random anywhere. Within forty steps they have nothing in common — and the rule was not doing anything to them that it does not do to everything.
Eight rules and a triangle
A row of cells, each one deciding its next state from the three above it. Eight cases, one bit of output each — a rule that fits in a byte, and 256 of them in total. One of those bytes draws Pascal's triangle.
Named alongside it
The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.
IterationBinaryCellular automatonChaosLocalityLogistic mapOrbitPascals trianglePredictionRoundingRule 90Self similarity