The Strange Similarity of Neuron and Galaxy Networks
nautil.us
nautil.us
If you read some complexity books this is the theme: the same structures show up in different substrates.
Also, this validates cosmic brain memes.
how do neurons "know" which neurons have large number of connections?
That's a major caveat, although I think in the end it just makes things more interesting. "There's plenty of room at the bottom" as Feynman said. Technologies like nanophotonics will allow us to have things like sold state LIDAR and perfect spatial tracking for virtual reality. Also to boost solar cell efficiency to ranges >50%, which has been impossible with the classical light modeling used up until now.
Perhaps the reality is that all of these scales are linked fundamentally, but proving that would be quite a task.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law
This discussion, yesterday, on normal distributions, also has some very good insights..
The self-similarity and fractal nature of our world is indeed puzzling and fascinating, but it goes far beyond brains.
This is a similarity between models of neuron and galactic networks, not the actual networks themselves.
I don't think anyone is trying to make an argument that they are the same 'thing' ("hey, maybe the observable Universe is a 'thought' inside a cosmic brain!"), just that there are striking similarities in structure - which can only easily be seen by a comparison of models.
The only rough similarity is the looks, and only if you dye the brain tissue in a special way.
Life is exogenous to the universe. That gives life it's meaning-to define what it is through it's impact on the universe. This is because the universe is in average empty and lifeless. The inanimate universe vastly outweighs the animate. Life could not ever overcome the average emptiness of the universe. But still it must try. It must try because if it ceases it becomes the inanimate. Life is that exogenous influence on the universe not attributable to any other physical or chemical process. If you simply cannot explain it then it may be life.
Brain evolution over time is definitely dependent upon physics/chemistry - but it's also dependent on conditions at higher levels of abstraction. We know neurons change their associations every day based on many factors at the conscious and subconscious levels (observations/thoughts).
I think that this is a good question, and central to a lot of the confusion that stems from a casual reading of some modern topics in physics. It's the difference between a black hole in nature, which formed in a realistic process, and the Schwarzschild metric, which has a uniform sphere of "dust" collapsing from infinity, in an empty universe, without gravity, and no angular momentum or charge.
The reason these models are used is because they can give insights and/or generate new tools to explore reality with. On the other hand, they're just maps, just approximations of systems which we couldn't hope to accurately model with fidelity.
On one hand, you get some amazing insights when your models intersect with observations, but you also need to remember... "The map is not the territory."
Of course, it is unlikely that there is a physical, causal link between the two. But if I have two photographs of two different things and they look similar, is it not then fair to say that the way those two different things look is similar?
[Edit: also - to be fair - it is not just models of structure formation (like the power law presented in the article) - we have pretty pictures of the large scale structure of the Universe as well http://www.sdss3.org/images/gallery/sdss_pie2.jpg]
The model is an instrument not the subject itself. A person cannot cook dinner in the kitchen of a blueprint.
The article does not demonstrate the utility of the (non-wrongness) similarities between the models. It address the "A cow is like a hammer because there is a 'b' in 'both'," possibility. Two models developed using similar techniques used in the discipline of modeling will have non-functional similarities.
Further, only one paper was referenced - and it was written by the author of the article! Guess what? It has 1 (one) citation.
>Is the apparent similarity just the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in random data (apophenia)? Remarkably enough, the answer seems to be no: Statistical analysis shows these systems do indeed present quantitative similarities.
This is not a good argument. The similarity of images is not the similarity of systems.
Also,
>In other words, it tells us how many high-frequency and low-frequency notes make the peculiar spatial melody of each image.
.. come on, man. Come on.
>Based on the latest analysis of the connectivity of the brain network, independent studies have concluded that the total memory capacity of the adult human brain should be around 2.5 petabytes, not far from the 1-10 petabyte range estimated for the cosmic web!
So if I make a 3-petabyte hard drive, it's self-aware? There are a few things wrong with this passage. The first is that no citations are given. The second is that connectivity is not the only important aspect of brain function. The third is that 2.5 petabytes falls firmly WITHIN the 1-10 pb range given. The fourth is that a 1-10 pb range hardly seems to tell us anything.
>Roughly speaking, this similarity in memory capacity means that the entire body of information that is stored in a human brain (for instance, the entire life experience of a person) can also be encoded into the distribution of galaxies in our universe.
No. Galaxies don't fire action potentials. The data points could be mapped to each other, perhaps, but this doesn't mean that the information is the same, given that the information depends on the way the data is read.
>It is truly a remarkable fact that the cosmic web is more similar to the human brain than it is to the interior of a galaxy; or that the neuronal network is more similar to the cosmic web than it is to the interior of a neuronal body
Is it really? Seems like apophenia is taking hold again. Of course we want to recognise ourselves in the universe. God made man in his image blah blah blah blah. People should be wary of this way of thinking.
surface of the sun: https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/1/590x/thesun-4...
I'm not sure but it is my understanding the HBP plans on studying the human brain from a static measurements of adult specimens. That seems at odd with the cosmological models used here, which are dynamical, building a structure from an initial conditions.
Is there an accurate model for the dynamics of brain during the development of the embryo? If not couldn't we start from the cosmological model and tweak it until it produces a structure that matches the brain even better?
Does that mean our solar system is Oxygen or Fluorine? Or are gas giants neutrons?
Are galaxies cells? Do the orders of magnitude map?
Are we then still the universe experiencing itself?