First off, Wolfram's attempt to classify automata into four categories is flawed: it isn't obvious that every cellular automata falls into one of those categories and not all the categories are even rigorously defined.
Yes, David has a page about that topic.
Without studying it in detail, I'm skeptical of the importance its claim. David says he has found class 1 and 3 systems that produce gliders. Perhaps David is poor at classifying systems. The existence of gliders strongly implies a system is class 2 or 4.
But perhaps he really has found class 1 and 3 systems in which a glider can exist. Is that important? Well, since the classification is statistical, being "class 1" really means "behavior is more class-1-like than any other class". So particular structures can still exist in a cla...
I believe that life on Earth arose spontaneously. I also believe the galaxy around me is largely devoid of life. I reconcile these things using the anthropic principle.
I also believe that fundamental cosmological constants have values convenient for the development of life. I don't know if it makes sense to pretend that those constants could have had other values - it seems to me like arguing that e could have been 2.716. But it's certainly done. And again, the anthropic principle is sometimes invoked, as an alternative to, say, God.
Suppose somebody came up with a new theory of cosmological constants, that claimed that only certain values are allowable, and that a large percentage of the allowable sets would make life possible. Then you wouldn't have to use the anthropic principle. Wouldn't you be more comfortable with that?
But if that's so, doesn't it mean that you really attach a low prior to the anthropic principle? And that you don't truly accept the anthropic principle?
How do you do Bayesian belief revision when one of your alternative hypotheses uses the anthropic principle? Can you give a strong preference to the hypothesis that does not require it? Because I know that I would.