The Scalability of the Universe

I just listened to a brilliant Ted talk from Physicist Geoffrey West. I also saw him on Through the Wormhole. He made some very interesting points about networks and scalability.

He showed the same scalability that you see in Biology, you also see in Cities and Companies. So maybe there's a Universal Law of Scalability that's hardwired into the universe. This should be the case because companies and cities are extensions of human biology. He showed how smaller networks can scale up as well.

On Through the Wormhole he calculated the heartbeat of a city. Maybe a heartbeat can be extended to a galaxy and the universe itself. Maybe the Big Bang was the expansion of the heartbeat of a superorganism and trillions of years after the bang the universe could contract. So the universe is one heartbeat of a superorganism.

Interesting stuff and just something to think about.

Here's the Ted Talk:

What happens when that superorganism our universe is in's heart is broken or it has a heartattack?

reply to post by neoholographic


Interesting, within this analogy I would posit that our regulatory enforcement regime most closely resembles an autoimmune disorder.

greencmp
reply to post by neoholographic

 

Interesting, within this analogy I would posit that our regulatory enforcement regime most closely resembles an autoimmune disorder.

What you just said reminded me of the humans are a virus thing lol.

reply to post by neoholographic


Absolutely. I've discussed this idea in another thread. The person I had been debating with at the time said this was all just equivocation. A subjective opinion on both counts I'll concede...
But its plainly obvious that nature favors networks on all scales- for the purpose of flow for: energy, information, nutrients, blood, air, whatever...

Here have a look:
Universe:


Neural network:


Neurons:


Lightening:


Dendrites:


More Dendrites:


Root systems:


A tree:


Lungs:


The internet:



To showcase just a few of the similarities between network structures found in all scales of the universe, including itself...

Holographicmeat

greencmp
reply to post by neoholographic

 

Interesting, within this analogy I would posit that our regulatory enforcement regime most closely resembles an autoimmune disorder.

What you just said reminded me of the humans are a virus thing lol.

Our "agents" think very similarly.

gardener
What happens when that superorganism our universe is in's heart is broken or it has a heartattack?

In the blink of an eye we stop being.

Might take a few billion light years for that blink to occur, though.

reply to post by PhotonEffect


FINALLY!?!?!?! Someone else gets it. I have been trying to tell my family/friends that the freaking universe looks like a close up of a brain and no one could see it. It's obvious to me. They told me I am just trying to see something that's not there, an apophenia type deal. lol

reply to post by Holographicmeat


your family is very unusual.

it is commonly known that the neural network in the brain is similar to the "observable universe" image, and dendrites, and lightning, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

It is a fractal image. The ancients were dumb, and they saw it too. "As above, so below", the hermetic tradition and the esoteric mysteries...they knew it and created entire schools around it.

bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by Holographicmeat

 

your family is very unusual.

it is commonly known that the neural network in the brain is similar to the "observable universe" image, and dendrites, and lightning, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

It is a fractal image. The ancients were dumb, and they saw it too. "As above, so below", the hermetic tradition and the esoteric mysteries...they knew it and created entire schools around it.

I made up my mind that everyone I know is an absolute moron a long time ago. If it's not a bible quote they don't care. It completely blinds them all. Even from basic logic. It's weird. Small southern Texas towns, you gotta love them.

Wow! That's pretty fascinating. I have to bookmark that and watch that later.

reply to post by Holographicmeat


i grew up in one that was 1000 people. The one i live in now is well under 40k. I attended college at a baptist university in a town known as "The Buckle Of The Bible Belt".

I totally get what you mean. I am lucky, i guess, in that my family moved here in the mid-late 70's. So i was raised with folks who had seen more, lived more, and understood more. Or different instead of more....whichever you want to call it.

reply to post by PhotonEffect


Great post!

Here's some photos of cities from space at night.

i.telegraph.co.uk...

i.telegraph.co.uk...

static.ibnlive.in.com...

I think, universe is more like Pyongyang at night not the relation, but the life existence,.
Pyongyang