Saturday, September 12, 2020
Same strategy
After I started using Google Analytics, I was able to distinguish bot "reads" from real reads more accurately. Basically, Statcounter shows the humans and Google shows the bots. I decided to clarify the situation by deleting the old and meaningless items that serve as bot magnets.
Since I started this cleaning procedure, the meaningless bots seem to have detected what I'm doing. Deprived of their regular stupidity diet, they're seeking other stupid items. All of these items have been bot magnets in the past, but hadn't been on the menu lately. The more stupid I delete, the more actively the stupid-eaters pursue more stupid.
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A couple weeks ago there was an interesting bit of neuro research, showing that both free-living cells and internal cells use a complex strategy to find their desired edibles. For bacteria and amoebas, the goal is food. For immune cells and neurons, the goal is a chemical signal emitted by another cell or organ. The signal is telling the immune cell where to fight an infection, or telling the neuron where a synapse is wanted.
When the desired signal or food seems to be coming from two or more places, the seeker consumes the chemical from both paths and then waits to see which of the paths refills first. This tells the seeker which source is more active. Pretty damn smart for a cell.
When I read the research, I couldn't think of a macro-scale example of the same strategy, so I didn't bother to write about it. Now I see the macro-scale example! It's sort of inverted, but the principle is the same. The stupid-seeking bots are watching to see which of the paths is emptied out, and then pursuing the paths that are still full.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 12:31 AM
