The observation that other CA can be equivalent is a weak critique at best, this CA may be a nice compact way of describing types of CA that have interesting properties. It is not terribly interesting that it may be subsumed by some other CA. It may be some interesting unstudied subset.
For instance the Game of Life is a subset of 2-d binary state CA, the rule only takes the totals of neighboring cells, and so is a subset of those CAs with rules that care about specific patterns of neighbors.
For instance the Game of Life is a subset of 2-d binary state CA, the rule only takes the totals of neighboring cells, and so is a subset of those CAs with rules that care about specific patterns of neighbors.