Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

we are continually bombarded with so many sights, so many sounds, so many “happenings,” and so many other people at such a high rate that we are simply unable to process the entire barrage of sensory information. If we tried to respond to every stimulus, our cognitive and psychological circuitry would break down and, in a word, we would blow a fuse just like an overloaded electrical circuit. And sadly, some of us do. Milgram suggested that the kinds of “antisocial” behaviors we perceive and experience in large cities are in fact adaptive responses for coping with the sensory onslaught of city life, implying that without such adaptations we’d all blow our fuses.

Consistency