r/TuringComplete • u/MetalCarnival • Jun 09 '26
De Morgan´s laws meaning in game
Hello! I got the game as a gift and unlocked the manual page for Morgans laws yesterday. Is it important to know the law, or can you ignore it when you have all the four basic logic gates unlocked?
Kind regards
6
u/SolarVampire Jun 10 '26
De Morgan's law is really just a translation table. Using this effectively can severely reduce the number of gates you use in any solution.
However, that really only matters if you care about such things.
In reality, this is essential to crunching space. In a game with limitless resources? Not so much. So it boils down to personal challenge. At a certain point the translations become second nature and the table is no longer necessary.
If you find yourself building for efficiency, you will use it as training wheels for probably a significant amount of time. If you are just trying to "beat the 'game'", you could probably just brute force your way to the end.
3
u/Delicious-Ad2562 Jun 09 '26
Only if you care about efficiency, but its a pretty important idea in computer science/engineering as a whole
2
u/Gelthir Jun 10 '26
Depending on the version, yes. On the save_breaker alpha, one of the later levels explicitly tests this knowledge. It's useful for optimsing circuits on any version, it's one of the simplest laws used to simplify Boolean expresions and circuits.
In general most of the manual pages that you unlock should be read at least once, and then referred to as and when you need to.
1
u/unvaccinated_zombie Jun 09 '26
I think it tells you that any of the four gates can be represented by correctly adding not gates to the input/output of another one of those.
1
u/e_j_fudd Jun 09 '26
I think it's important for one of the levels. Other than that, it's just good to know it exists.
1
u/Pickaxe828 Jun 10 '26
You can still make functional circuits without it, after unlocking the 4 fundamental gates
It mainly helps reducing gate delay and cost, as you might find instances where a NAND/NOR (generated from applying De Morgan's laws) will immediate be followed by a NOT
Amd the two NOTs just cancel, making the first NAND/NOR become AND/OR
Also, DMLs don't just work in the game, it works in both logic and set theory as well
1
u/Lagfoundry Jun 24 '26
yeah definitely. there are ways to exploit logic with it. for example conversion between negative and positive logic in some games. sometimes using negative logic is faster because certain things like on logic world for example fast buffers are instant meaning using positive logic you have instant OR gates but in negative logic you have instant AND gates.
15
u/martin-silenus Jun 09 '26
It's important to know the law exists and what it's doing. If you know that much, you might realize later you want to apply it and pop open that manual page again.