lukiferon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Accidentally Turing-Complete”
For anyone curious about the details of building a Turing machine in MtG, Because Science did a thorough breakdown and demonstration, using actual cards: link to this video
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#turingcompleteness#magicthegathering#turingmachine
I Built a COMPUTER in Magic: The Gathering
Because Science
1.4M subscribers • 1 video on Hallway
- Recommended by 3 people: 3 on Hacker News.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2026.
- Presented by Kyle Hill, host of Because Science
Beginner. No background in the topic needed.
2M views7 years ago3 recommendations
Computer scienceComputation and complexityAlgorithms
Kyle Hill explains and demonstrates how the rules of Magic: The Gathering can be used to construct a fully functional Turing machine.
Magic: The Gathering is famously complicated, but did you know it is complicated enough to make a computer inside of? Witness a world first in this week’s episode!Why it's here
3 people recommend thisWhat people say. Recommended as an entertaining and clear visual explanation of Turing completeness using a real-world card game.
bentonaon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Magic: The Gathering Is Turing Complete (2019)”
Here's a demo: link to this video Didn't realize this before watching, but it's interesting that there's an incredibly complicated board state but the game state / actions are deterministic, e.g. the players don't have any choices about what to do once the machine is set up.
mckn1ghton Hacker News • Recommends
On “MTG Bench: Testing how well LLMs can play magic”
Someone made a video based on the paper, if you want to see the cards being used and a little more explanation: link to this video
cyberfarton Hacker News • Mentions
On “My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art”
Related to your comment, here's the paper 0 and Because Science recently made a video about how such a game would look like 1. 0 link 1 link to this video