I suppose in a sense it would. Would be really interesting to explore that with different input values and see what happens. I imagine some changes would result in the whole thing eventually collapsing and others would maybe get self corrected. My guess is a any single change would collapse it either entirely or at least break the simulation of the game of life, while two changes might self correct each other.

I also wonder what happens if we make changes not just to the initial configuration but at different iterations. After iteration 2, change x. It'd be like interweaving functions.

Hmm really getting curious about trying this out myself.

I don’t think a change with effects rippling out would be a cancer.

Cancer self-replicates whereas this would simply be either fast catastrophic failure for all levels above, or a change whose effect got suppressed (either died out, or maintained but doesn’t change next level behavior) and only had limited temporary impact.

I think he meant it in the sense that its a mutation that propagates indefinitely. But yeah its a loose analogy.

Why would you expect corrective effects to occur?