Brain & universe more similar than once believed + Robot wolf shields town from bears

[C C]

Your brain and the universe are more similar than previously thought
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/your-br...y-thought/

INTRO: Across vast distances, galaxies are organized in a structure of filaments, nodes, and voids collectively known as the cosmic web. Inside our brain, neurons are also organized in a network of filaments and nodes. This similarity has long spiked the curiosity of scientists, artists, and the general public. Now, new research published in Frontiers in Physics shows the two systems are a lot more similar than we thought.

Two Italian researchers, an astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon, set out to see if the visual similarities had a deeper connection. Neurons and galaxies are vastly different systems that self-organize into large structures, which the team’s research suggests are shaped by similar underlying principles. The work does not claim we have a universe in our skull or that the cosmos is a giant brain. Instead, it focuses on the properties of network dynamics... (MORE)

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Robotic 'Monster Wolf' protects Japanese town from bears
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180976300/

EXCERPTS: The Japanese town of Takikawa, on the country’s northern island of Hokkaido, have installed robotic “monster” wolves in hopes of guarding the town from the growing scourge of marauding bears, Reuters reports. The shaggy, wolf-shaped robots are designed to scare bears and other nuisance animals back into the wild with glowing red eyes and speakers that play frightening sounds.

Beginning in September, Takikawa residents started reporting bears emerging from the surrounding forests to roam the town. [...] In response to this uptick in dangerous bear-human interactions, Takikawa purchased a pair of robotic wolves -- a product dubbed “Monster Wolf” -- from Japanese machinery maker Ohta Seiki, according to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK). If Monster Wolf’s motion sensor is tripped, its LED eyeballs glow red and its head swivels from side to side while a loudspeaker blares one of 60 noises ranging from howls to heavy machinery, per Reuters.

Since September, when Takikawa installed the robotic bear deterrents, there have been zero bear encounters, city officials tell Reuters. [...] In other locations, the robots’ primary are keeping deer and wild boars away from crops. Real wolves once roamed the forests of Japan’s central and northern islands, but have been absent for more than a hundred years after being hunted to extinction... (MORE - details)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cD1LhIjaMqQ

[Zinjanthropos]

I've had similar thoughts re brain vs universe but for all I know we're part of some gigantic being's rectum.

If the universe is a brain then it should know we are here. Question is: is life as we know it akin to a virus or cancer? Because it seems life is trying to survive while the universe is out to kill it. They say real matter only comprises 3-5% of the universe....has anybody checked to see if that number is growing or shrinking?

[C C]

I've had similar thoughts re brain vs universe but for all I know we're part of some gigantic being's rectum.

If the universe is a brain then it should know we are here.

Well, to recreationally throw the article's caution against literality to the wind... Not necessarily, any more than humans were aware of the microscopic contents of their own brains until recent centuries. Though if we were invaders from "outside", a kind of mechanistic awareness might arise at the immunity level, similar to events in Fantastic Voyage.

The antibiotic defenses would have to already be nearby since we'd have perished by the time information traveled across thousands or millions of parsecs to alert any Grand Central Security and assemble a protective response crossing similar distance. OTOH, a major irritant we left behind might be proliferating after our demise for it to intercept. 

If the great brain had thoughts, they would be bogglingly slow compared to ours (slower than how microbes or atoms would conceive ours if they could).

Question is: is life as we know it akin to a virus or cancer? Because it seems life is trying to survive while the universe is out to kill it.

It might actually be a friendly universe to life compared to most other options.

Quasi-facetiousness: But no, we're not a fungus, because we're supposed to engineer self-replicating machines, before we go extinct, that will become nomadic, space-residing wildlife slowly traversing the light-years. I.e., introduce a kind of "new biological" evolution to the cosmos at large. Though, thereby, we're not continually important in the long run -- discards once we accomplish the goal.

Earth's incredible streak of good fortune could fall out of there being googolplex numbers of failed realms and planets(?) in existence that make possible the probability of a world as lucky as Teela Brown being among them. Which produces life and eludes the usual solar and galactic disasters as if an invisible-hand were watching over it with a plan. 

They say real matter only comprises 3-5% of the universe....has anybody checked to see if that number is growing or shrinking?

Just the abstract accounting or bookkeeping of a process, anyway. No concrete "stuff" or non-ephemeral substantiveness to it unless four-dimensionalism is the case.