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It must be more general than that, otherwise the cells wouldn’t be able to repair their area if the damage came from the wrong direction (repair is not center-out).

The model generally learns to generate each pixel from its surroundings, even if the surroundings are partially missing.

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There's hidden state in the model which presumably it uses to communicate position, ie there's the 3 colors but then a bunch of other channels that the model can use how it wants.
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Have you actually tried that? If you specifically erase the center, the image does change a lot at first, but rebuilds itself eventually (albeit to a slightly different final state). It's uncanny how "biological" is feels!
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I have yes.. You need to erase a larger amount of the center, but it almost always results in a collapse wheras erasing around the center typically regrows.
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If you hold the eraser for a second at the center, I find that it destroys the image more often than not.
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