Majority Problem (cellular Automaton) - Impossibility of A Perfect Classifier

Impossibility of A Perfect Classifier

In 1994, Land and Belew showed that no two-state rule with radius r and density ρ correctly solves the voting problem on all starting configurations when the number of cells is sufficiently large (larger than about 4r/ρ).

Their argument shows that because the system is deterministic, every cell surrounded entirely by zeros or ones must then become a zero. Likewise, any perfect rule can never make the ratio of ones go above if it was below (or vice-versa). They then show that any assumed perfect rule will either cause an isolated one that pushed the ratio over to be cancelled out or, if the ratio of ones is less than, will cause an isolated one to introduce spurious ones into a block of zeros causing the ratio of ones to be become greater than .

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