Saturday, November 6, 2010

Herding constant, spike trains and economics

Why not?

Deep within our brain is the mid brain built on top of the olfactory brain.  The olfactory brain made animals smell dominate, they found stuff by smell.  Mammals adapted this capability to track the herd.

Here is how it works:
When an individual member of the herd is within  the proper size and spread of fellow membersm then that midbrain generates a steady spike train.  If the spike train is not there, we do not function the same, we are uneasy in inappropriate crowds.

What about lizards?  Well that olfactory brain generates a spike train that matches the lizards gate at cruising speed.  But the lizard is not tracking the herd, he is directly hunting food so there is no intermediation.  In fact, the original purpose of the olfactory brain is to locomate the animal to food, it is a muscle spasm frequency matched to the animals gait.

So the mammalian advantage, the ability to biologically know the appropriate herd size and spread.
 No matter how much evolution changes other characteristics, it can always evolve a herd size to fit the animal and the environment.

So in economics, the queue size everywhere is fixed, biologically, and that forces mammals to build production lines while lizards don't.

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