 This finding is not of great engineering importance (no one would spend their time translating “\(24 + 26 / 13\)” into Life). However, it raises a conceptual issue about any universe sharing the capacity of producing and hosting universal computers: because of the aforementioned Halting Theorem, no general algorithm is to decide whether, given some initial configuration as input, Life will eventually die out or halt. It is in this sense that the evolution of the automaton is unpredictable. Given that the development of CA that are computationally universal cannot be predicted by direct mathematical analysis alone, it is no surprise that CA practitioners have adopted the language of philosophy and talked of phenomenological studies of CA (we will come back to this terminology in more detail in  Section 3.4  below, discussing how CA model whatever they can model). Here the automaton is realized as a computer software, and the observable emergent properties of its evolution are empirically registered as the computer simulation advances. In Wolfram’s turn of phrase, Life is algorithmically irreducible: no algorithmic shortcut is available to anticipate the outcome of the system given its initial input. “Life—like all computationally universal systems—defines the most efficient simulation of its own behavior” (Ilachinski 2001: 15). This raises the important philosophical question of the limits of the predictability of any universe capable, just as Life is, of producing and hosting universal computers. 