Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. 'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,' said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski. 'Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.' The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E."
This is bullshit and I will never believe it.
"When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority
If that were the case, no new ideas would ever take hold.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I believe this to be true, and 10% of my friends agree!
So what if 2 groups hold opposing ideas at the same time, and each one has 10% mind share? The "Always" part of this prediction bothers me.
It might work where the general population is neutral to the idea, but doesn't work in most ceicumstances when there are strong opinions. For example France is approaching a 10% Muslim population but it is extremely unlikely that the rest will suddenly accept Islam.
How high is the percentage of geeks in the world? I'd say it's just over 10%, but then why isn't the world a better place, for example with functioning space programs?!
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
What if 10% of the population have an unshakable belief in the opposite? What happens then? Does society suffer, does one idea eventually take over?
I can think of plenty of examples where this might happen - Christianity vs. Science (or even another religion). It's very possible that 10% of society has an unshakable belief in God while another 10% have an unshakable belief in Science (or no God).
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I would like to think that it is not just the percentage of the population that holds the beliefs but the rate of growth it has the moment it reached it. Crowds prefer exponential growth than a logarithmic one. Don't have any citations, but I have a feeling it's the former in OS X and Apple computers in general.
This doesn't really seem to account for the concept of conflicting ideas. Otherwise we'd all be Christiaethistislamihindubuddists.
The study assumes 10% "strongly convinced" vs 90% "opinion-less". This is not very realistic. When you change the parameters to 10/80/10 you get a fluctuation between the two extrems (as to be expected).
I think this is clearly false because only 10-50% of the country are Teabaggers.
Well then how would any idea ever be able to reach 10%?
The definition of "unshakable" seems self-selecting, and perhaps even tautological.
FWIW, I note the fortune at the bottom of the page in which I'm editing my comment says:
--
make install -not war
If that is true, it means that it is possible for 10 contradicting ideas to be adopted by the majority of the population given the right starting beliefs. In other words you will have the majority of the population believing in things that they believe is not true.
I personally have an unshakable belief that the 10% figure they give is bogus. There is no such magic threshold. They essentially claim that if 9% of the population believe in something, that percentage can never reach a majority, but if 11% believe in it, it will grow to the majority of the population. Hence a growth from 1% to 9% could be possible, but a growth from 9% to 11% is utterly impossible, or at least take billions of years. And once you reach 11% it will explode and reach the majority of the population in no time. But in that case, how did any idea ever reach 10% of the population in the first place, since humankind has not yet existed for an amount of time comparable to the age of the universe.
Maybe it has something to do with observation?
If the first time you quantify an idea's market share it's below 9, you're screwed. Otherwise, I agree with you. How would you ever GET to 10% if 9.8% means nobody will ever care.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
U.S. health care is BEST in the world.
Yours In Miami,
K. T.
It's the same idea as willing to teach a thousand monkey to wash coconuts when the US tested H bomb in the atols back then. They tried to repopulate with monkeys.
Coconut were radioactive so they tried to teach a few monkey on how to wash their coconuts.
It took a lot of time for the first 100 monkeys to wash their coconut.
But as soon as they reached the 100th monkey suddenly the whole thousand started washing their coconut before eating it..
I didn't, but this makes no sense:
“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,”
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But the way their research is summarized makes it sound ridiculous.
Under 10% and an idea will never get traction? Above 10% and it will be accepted by everyone?
This is beyond oversimplification.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The only constants are mathematical, not hypothetical. I think it varies based upon actual exposure and plausibility of the idea. For example, currently mobile phone technology is very visible to (most) people, so an idea that pertains to this will have greater exposure than would, say, some innovation in raising circus fleas. If only 1% of the mobile phone tech enthusiasts come across an absolutely brilliant concept, it's much more likely to spread and reach any greater percentile, but the same can't be said for the circus flea scientist.
Or maybe my unshakable beliefs that there is no deity and in the process of evolution through natural selection is not shared by even a meagre 10 percent of the population.
So hands up! Which of you is letting the side down?
But if it takes an infinite amount of time for a belief to be adopted by a majority if it's held by under 10% of the population, how does it ever grow over 10%? it's like a zeno's paradox.
Now i see why the nature made only 10% of the population homosexual. If it was a bigger number, then everybody would be homo, and the result would be the extinction of the human race.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3931
seems a lot more reasonable than the article/summary:
We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pcâ10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when ppc, Tc~lnN. We conclude with simulation results for ErdÅ's-Rényi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.
... Fanaticism.
I quote the abstract here, emphasis added:
We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
There will never be a 'Year of the Linux Desktop' !
I daresay that 10% of the population is young enough to firmly believe in Santa Claus. That does not translate into the majority of the society believing in him.
--
$tar -xvf
In the blog linked from the summary, the blog writer uses the word 'always' for the spread of an idea. The quotes from the director of research Szymanski do not show 'always' in that sense. As for the age of the hyperbole Universe comment, it seems to be merely emphasizing that no progress is made toward person to person spreading of the given belief, when the current adoption is underneath the 10% value. He could have equivalently said "until the cows come home."
It seems to me this is a simple diffusion problem. A person's belief might be influenced if N or more people in that person's immediate circle of contacts (call it T people) hold the given belief. The researchers say that N/T > 0.1 will spread the belief by person to person diffusion, less will not. This means that if you wish to introduce a new belief into society, you and your cohorts must work to get to that fraction, whereupon thereafter, it will take on a life of its own without your continuing effort to promote it. Since the introduction of a belief by diffusion increases the fraction, it will proceed exponentially. In this context, that perhaps justifies the calling the spread "rapid".
True or false? Who knows. This was a blog of quotes, not a research article. Perhaps if 10% of slash dotters come to believe in it, everyone will.
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
Ya, and FB, which, by all estimates, spread like wildfire, doesn't have 10% of the world's population yet.
Ok, so they investigated computer simulations of three different models of communication within a population. Everyone talks to everyone else, special hub people who talk to lots of people, and everyone with equal number of connections. Then they sprinkled in special people who's opinions couldn't be changed, and let them talk.
Couple Questions:
How did they determine whether listening to someone influenced a persons opinion?
Seems likely that in a given population, a minority of committed individuals like this would naturally self segregate, possibly even leaving the population voluntarily.
Did they model the continual rotation of population? Even the luckiest individual is around to spread his/her opinion for 100 years.
-- "The Price of Freedom of Speech, of Press, or of Religion is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish."
So, since 1/10 people believe the world is ending soon, that's apparently the belief of everybody? We can't deny that roughly one out of ten people have the armageddon bug, so where's the majority on that?
What people say and what people do help to illustrate how humans are capable of believing, sure, but also of saying what they think other people want them to hear. Behaviour, not words, proves a person's belief. You can say all day that you don't believe in adultery but still have sex with your neighbor instead of your spouse. What did you really believe, then?
You can say all day that you believe the world is ending but you still hold long-term investments and you still go to work and try to keep the company afloat in tough economic times, stressing yourself out and sustaining a family and heralding the birth of your descendants. What happened to "the world could end at any minute" in all of that?
Humans don't stress themselves out needlessly, we have built-in stops protecting us against that. When you break it to the poor guy down in the hole whose back is giving out and who's sweating like a hog that you lied, there's no buried treasure down there but you want him to dig anyway, he's not going to keep digging, moron.
Even if there are ten guys down there doing the work and sending the dirt up in buckets, and once they're deep enough that they can't climb out you pull up the ropes and tell them all never mind, it's a ten-man gravesite, and ONE GUY says "no, I still believe there's buried treasure", the rest of them aren't going to flip you the bird and resume digging!
God, people are so fucking stupid sometimes.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The authors (on a quick read of the original paper) are talking about a saddle point in the adoption of a new idea. This is basically the same as epidemiology, and their paper can be viewed as about a model of contagion in the case of infectious agents who can't be cured and don't die. So, in that sense this is like the classic result in epidemiology that an epidemic can't spread if the "basic reproduction number" is less than 50%. It's not magic, and it doesn't mean that if you get 10% + 1 acceptance is guaranteed, just where the tipping point is in this "modified epidemiology."
It's proof that their numbers are off!
For example, it ignores the case where there are two contradictory ideas, each held by more than 10% . (Liberal and Conservative politics for example)
And of course to become widely adopted the idea must grow past 10%. You can go from 9% to 90% without passing 10%.
A better way to write the story would have been, either one of the following (not sure which is true, as the article did not make it clear):
1) Unshakable belief grows slowly, no matter how zealous it's proponents are, up until it hits 10% of the population. Then, it it is not opposed by another unshakable belief, the growth will expand exponentially till it exceeds 50%.
or
2) Unshakable beliefs either spread very quickly from the beginning, quickly surpassing 10% and becomeing 50% or greater, or grow at a slow rate, never surpassing 10% of the population.
Either one of those two statements could be the truth. The article failed to explain which was true, instead concentrating on the stupid and obviously false statement that if an unshakable idea is held by more than 10% it will quickly become accepted by over 50%.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I skimmed the paper. These guys seem to be testing a universe where only two "opinions" exist to choose from. I don't know about you, but those types of scenarios don't exist in my world. Reality is always more complicated than that.
While oftentimes there is use in examining a simplified version of something, this doesn't appear to be one of those times.
Joseph Goebbels knew this, FOX news knows this, marketing experts know this, and whether through intuition or intentional exploitation they all have, and do, take advantage of this phenomenon
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This is not a discovery; making a model is part of the process, true (forming a hypothesis), but there is no validation. Anyone can poke a few formulas into a spreadsheet and call themselves scientists, otherwise.
Furthermore, doesn't the subject matter have something to do with the maleability (or commitedness) of the individuals? How is that addressed in the study?
The problem is that this article badly summarizes the results of computer modeling that is supposed to represent human interactions. Apparently the tipping point for their simulation is 10%. Without seeing the actual original research findings, it is difficult to see if this actually matters, but the available article seems to say that the 10% is irrespective of network structure.
The computer simulation seems more analogous to a disease outbreak than to an idea. Imagine a percentage of people are zombies. They can only attack their friends, who can fight them so long as they have more living than dead friends nearby (I am assuming here that it is 51% that is needed to change status, but who knows what the actual research used). If they don't, then they switch sides and spread the outbreak. So the simulation might be saying that if 10% of people are initially zombies, then mankind is generally doomed. If it is less, then the outbreak will be contained.
I also find it interesting that the study was funded by the military.
I don't believe it... do I?
Guys? Can we get a vote?
It might explain the Tea Party then.
Take the Red Pill.
I believe the US debt indicates otherwise.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect
The summary of the article does not really describe what the paper is about - a specific, simplified model, with certain assumptions and conditions under which the statement of the article is true (I have not checked the math though). If the observed reality does not match the model, maybe there are other things in play that change the outcomes.
Meanwhile I wonder how zealots with unchangeable belief come to existence (if they actually exist) and how to easily detect them not to waste time preaching to them.
The issue I'm perceiving with this is the entire study seems based on computer models, not actual people. Models, regardless of how well built will not capture the full essence of human reactions and beliefs. It also seems that the models exist in a framework that is not accounting for education as a force for opinion formation, but rather "if some 'opinion leader" says it then I believe it". It also makes no mention of contrasting opinions, consolidation of existing foundation beliefs with the new idea or other critical factors. This is all great stuff for computer models but to me it says "in our fantasy opinion game that we made, if you reach 10% then you win"
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Belief doesn't alter facts
Once upon a time more than 10% of the people believed that the earth was flat..
It didn't stop this oblate spheroid from spinning, and orbiting the sun etc.
1 out of 10 Slashdot readers believes this to be true
In the real world, I think you could very easily have two groups of true believers holding mutually exclusive beliefs who each comprise more than 10% of the society
What happens when two different 10%s of the population hold two different mutually incompatible ideas?
Technoli
So either this guy is Hari Seldon and has a working theory of psychohistory, or this is mostly bullshit.
So we're almost of the point where Atheism takes over then?
The definition of "unshakable" seems self-selecting, and perhaps even tautological.
It puzzles me that you submit this to Physical Review E:
Physical Review E, interdisciplinary in scope, focuses on many-body phenomena, including recent developments in quantum and classical chaos and soft matter physics. It has sections on statistical physics, equilibrium and transport properties of fluids, liquid crystals, complex fluids, polymers, chaos, fluid dynamics, plasma physics, classical physics, and computational physics. In addition, the journal features sections on two rapidly growing areas: biological physics and granular materials.
Physical Review E
I don't see why the % would change just because I read their bullshit paper. I like 10%, so I'll leave the state unchanged by not reading it.
They ARE the ones that don't believe in actually increasing funding to service debts they rack up themselves, so I suppose it's possible.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
You split populations into smaller subsets. Let's say you're the only person with an idea. You need to work with a population of 10 or fewer to be able to spread that idea. Anything larger than 10 will fail. So you converted the initial 10. You can now spread the idea through a population group of about 100, then 1,000, then 10,000, then 100,000, then 1,000,000 and so on.
So if your group of 300 has a radical idea and you're slinging it out everywhere you can, you're probably going to fail dismally since you're targeting too large of a population.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
" How would you ever GET to 10% if 9.8% means nobody will ever care."
I think what they're saying, is the rate at which ideas exchange below 10% is abysmally low. So low, that if that same rate was applied to the entire population, it would take billions of years. But that rate changes once it gets past 10%. Once it hits 10%, it spreads fast.
It could be 10% with in a given group.
Say you have a small group of 20 really smart people (PHDs in a certain field). One person comes up with an idea and convinces his co-worker. Now you have two people in this small group. It may be the 10% tipping point. So now everyone in this small group believes something.
Next level. Since you have this entire group of 20 people who believe this new idea, they now publish their idea to the next group for review. Either 10% of this group accepts the idea or it doesn't. If the idea is believable enough, it will break the 10% barrier and take off or it will not not take off and their will always be this small sub-set of the entire group that has some idea that the group as a whole doesn't accept.
Cascade effect working it's way up through groups. The final group is the general population. But within the general population, you have sub groups. Just get 10% of people with-in a group to accept an idea and with-in a short time, you will have near the entire group accepting the idea. Once that happens, that group may be able to cause it's parent group to accept the idea.
It makes sense. Not saying it's correct, but the logic seems sound. The average person isn't going to blindly accept a new idea unless enough other people accept the idea also.
I believe that over 10% of the population holds an unshakable belief that UFOs exist and over 10% holds the opposite belief. Does that mean there are 2 majorities? I have not RTFA and realize the anonymous reader might have overstated things a bit. Still it is laughable.
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
This gives whole new meaning to decimating the population.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that, based on too-simplistic assumptions, when just 10 percent of the population in their model holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society in their model. 'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent [in our model], there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority [in our model],' said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski. 'Once that number grows above 10 percent [in our model], the idea spreads like flame.'
xkcd chimes in again!
http://xkcd.com/929/
I agree - the part that isn't gauging consensus is gagging dissidents.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The Bush administration proclaimed this over and over and over so no doubt at least 10% of their followers believed this. And look, they got a majority of the votes in the 2004 election.
But now I wonder if with the Mac at over 10% of the PC market will the rest follow even though "the majority" believe Microsoft Windows is the best software ever? Can the 10% butt up against the majority which hold some other belief and still gain a majority? I doubt it can happen without a generational change. People do not want to find their beliefs were/are incorrect.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"man made global climate change!"
Yep, and in the real world there are things like lawsuits stifling the idea propogation that would have otherwise gone on. There is also a media that makes sales by purposely presenting misleading slants on articles to make something sound like it has already passed the 10% mark effect, up until it crashes.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
and even with an almost identical title....
http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html
OK, but in all fairness, it seems that the researchers at RPI were able to objectively quantify, to some degree, when ideas take hold...
All you have to do is convince 10% of your peers that your missing raw data, suspect collection methodology and flawed hockeystick data representation are actually scientifically valid and the grant dollars will flow will flow.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,' said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski. 'Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.'
(1) There are ideas believed by the majority of the population.
(2) More than one of those ideas was, at one time, believed by less than 10% of the population.
(3) At many points in history, one majority idea was superseded by another majority idea.
(4) Since it takes "amount of time comparable to the age of the universe" for an idea to go from less than 10% agreement to majority belief, multiple "ages of the universe" have elapsed.
Conclusion: Multiple universes must have existed to account for all the elapsed time required for ideas to spread.
QED.
popularity it appears my preview skills are at the same level of ineptitude as my typing skills.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Table 1 describes a behavior of two spherical opinions in vaccum
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I guess the people in the US will have to come to grips that the belief of a few zealots that the Earth is 6000 years old since that's what it says in the bible, that the idea will eventually become the "TRUTH". Goodbye scientific thought and facts... I welcome the new world view... that Paul Revere rode around shooting guns and warning the British, and that being able to see another country from the state you live in gives you experience in foreign affairs.
If I read this right "When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority" then unless an idea starts with a 10% or greater it can never pass through that point on the way to being a majority.
DON'T EVER COME UP WITH AN IDEA OR IT WILL NEVER BE.
Both match well with your critical reasoning skills, though. It is, however, a quite apt example of relentless propaganda creating a core of "unshakable believers" on the denialist side, whereas the rest follows the developments and adopt their worldview according to the progress of science. You guys don't seem to have the 10% mark yet, though - probably to many in the "also running" category. Perhaps there is hope...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The number of obvious counterexamples is so large that there must be an error in their definition of the problem space.
Either that, or they're just full of it.
But the group has smaller sub-populations within it...
The flat-earth types that seem to characterize the social conservatives are pretty scary and they jumped into my mind immediately. But after further reflection, I realize that this 10% tipping point is actually very good news.
Old, flat-earth beliefs are just that - old. If something new comes along, like the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, and the planet is not flat, it gradually becomes the new belief.
It will be interesting to see how political campaigns will use this information.
Best regards.
Maybe the average person can learn to evaluate ideas based on more reasonable grounds than popularity.
I think it all started with a population of 12...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Both match well with your critical reasoning skills, though. It is, however, a quite apt example of relentless propaganda creating a core of "unshakable believers" on the denialist side,
My critical reasoning skills are far better than those of name-calling zealots pointing a finger and chorus to Sir Bedevere: "She's a witch! Burn her! Burn! Burn her!" at those who identify the reality of the basis of their poorly substantiated claims:
[We have NO] agreement on a model for generating a single figure of merit for "earth temperature" it is absurd to discuss changes in fractions of a degree. There are too many parameters in the definition, and it's easy to get any result you want by playing with the definition of "temperature." There are no continuous measures from 1880 to 2000; all have to have "adjustments" and the adjustments are often larger than the error margins.
[other post}
You can prove anything if you can make up your data, and just about anything if you can select your data. But it isn't science. - Jerry Pournelle
Also, how can we trust computer models when the models can't and don't account for Medieval Warm and the Little Ice Age, we have little data from the Southern Hemisphere prior to the Voyages of Discovery. If the hypothesis cant even be corroborated with the historical data we DO have with the tools used, how dependable are they for prediction? AGW is is the antithesis of "the progress of science", it is a hypothesis at best, and we lack sufficient data to even falsify it, let alone promote it as a forgone conclusion. How about something with a more climatic timespan: http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm If the data are correct, it looks like:
A) consecutive cold periods and warm periods appear to be getting closer together.
B) cold cycles look to be trending cooler.
C) warm cycles also appear to trend slightly cooler and terminating more abruptly.
See also previous discussion on the absurdity of their claims: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1629458&cid=31961726
Please educate us lowly "deniers", oh blond cheerleader, what do your priests say is the "proper" "global temperature" for which we should be striving with their demanded herculean efforts and trillions in expenditures to be put forth on this hand-waving of smoke in front of their carefully placed mirrors.?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Nice amount of namecalling and strawman burning, which pretty much corroborates my guess about your reasoning skills. Complete ignorance of the role of multiple proxies which show the same effects independently, complete ignorance of the distinction between local and global climate events, endless repetition of thrice-debunked bullshit, followed up by more namecalling and strawman burning. Good job there, your masters will be proud. Also, citing Pournelle as if he was evidence for anything but the fact that a hack writer can get a following in geek circles. I don't even expect you to go to your local library and get some real reviews about climate science - just check realclimate for a change and educate yourself. But I guess that is part of the "priesthood", too - as is everything contradicting your unshakable beliefs that are based on propaganda instead of fact.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The flaw in this reasoning is that before the percentage holding the idea reaches 10%, it must be less than 10%. But the assertion is that it cannot grow perceptibly if held by less than 10%. Built-in contradiction.
In order to control the hoi poloi you only need to target your propaganda at 10% of the population! That explains MTV and the huge amount of pressure and money poured into teens (around 7.19% of the US population as of 2008, or 21689114 teens total). With a rolling average of 7 years you could probably hit 10% with a 70% market penetration!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I understand the gist. If fewer than 10% believe, the asymptote of belief stays under 10%. Whatever the percentage is, is not important. And some ideas are more sellable than others.
Blasted by by media and bullshit our cynicism and skepticism antenna have become very active, and we like checking out the wackier ideas. There are many shades of grey, so to speak. Some plausible theories such as evolution have gained our approval in terms of viability but not necessarily full acceptance. A simple test: if someone has proved or disproved evolution but before telling you which it is, you can make a bet based on what you already know or believe. Which way would you bet? Deep down, many of us don't really believe in anything but are willing to make a gamble as long as the stakes are low. We hedge and try to maneuver ideas so that they don't have any effect. Does the Higgs boson exist? Whatever. Life goes on.
Truth is truth, regardless of how many people or what authority wants to fight it. People can start a crusade to spread a belief that is wrong, even win over the masses, but if the masses actually rely on this belief to the nth degree, there will be a day of reckoning and the falsehood will be exposed. In the immediate term the 10% rule indicates willingness to give credence to a large number of agreeing minds. In the longer term, we're all advised to think for ourselves.
--
critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Did it ever occur to you that fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing? Or that we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
If it only takes 10% of the population to believe in it, why wasn't weed legalized years ago?
I don't know if the research/conclusion is sound but intuitively I wonder if this idea explains why it is hard for big companies to innovate. The larger they get, the harder it is to get 10% of the population to support a new idea. It would mean that employees trying to promote a new idea need to first secure support of a least 10% of the population or find another company to work for if that is not possible. Note, you would not have to get 10% of the entire company if you only need 10% of your group.
I wonder if this also explains extremist behavior. For example, Breivik is thought to have killed in hopes that it would garner attention so more people would read about his ideas. Extremists need to cause terror if they hope to influence 10% of the population. It explains why extremists with the least influence are the most violent. It explains why they may feel their violence is justified. It explains why extremist bloggers must present a one-side and exaggerated point of view because a balanced POV would be ineffective.
As with all work in the area of social networks (and just about any other branch of science/engineering), the huge underlying assumption is the validity of the model. A large number of posted comments point out how this paper's conclusion has demonstrably failed in the real world (atheists vs. Christians, etc.). These comments are completely unfounded, however, because the paper never claims anything about these real-world set-ups. Here's what it says:
Given a binary decision variable distributed among nodes in a complete graph and a set of very simple rules that dictate the decision dynamics at each node, then consensus is achieved whenever the number of fixed-decision nodes exceeds about 10% of the total set.
First of all, most of the posted examples of this paper's "real-world failure" involve decision variables which are clearly not binary. Moreover, the world is not a complete graph -- the probability that I interact with the Queen of England in the next five minutes is somewhat lower than the probability that I talk to the guy in the desk behind me. Finally, in most of the posted comments' examples there is no hope that each individual's decision dynamics are even uniform, let alone as simple as "hey, I've heard that B is true from two people now, so I'm going to believe B."
Come on, guys! You are the slashdot community. If you can't keep from trying to generalize a very specific result accomplished via a toy model, no wonder the scientifically-illiterate masses can't either.
If this were true, how come in my company of 10 my strongly-believed marketing ideas ALWAYS get rejected?
It's problematic when faith in faith challenges skepticism about skepticism. We're well beyond the orbit of mere ideas. A true skeptic doesn't jump bandwagons at the drop of a pin. Despite outward appearances, there's no stubbornness gap in this confrontation.
I don't do "the shake" much in my everyday thinking. Of the issues that come to mind where I could go more than one way, it's because *there is* more than one way. Nuclear power is one such issue. If we decide (collectively) that it's devil spawn from top to bottom, then we're better off without it. We'll be too busy cursing at it to solve real problems.
If we decide (collectively) that nuclear power will save us from a multitude of greater griefs (e.g. the forced emigration of Bangladesh) and that puts us into a mindset to take the problems seriously and do something about them, it will probably work out.
At a major fork in the road, take the decision where you're most willing to tough it out. I've taken worse decisions because I had more staying power to confront the consequences on that side of the fence, and it's been the right decision.
The right decision quickly becomes the wrong decision if you stop moving your legs at the first hint of quicksand. (When I put it that way, it almost seems rational.) There are many decisions where right and wrong are downstream from collective gumption. This study suggests that people are wired to take gumption surveys.
Gumption surveys are connected to the blame reflex. Some page view of recent history informed me that:
The man who smile's at misfortune has thought of someone to blame.
I think the intransigent decile are Adam's apple to goat's blood at the first sign of trouble. It's less about sway than stockpile.
I amped my apostrophe finger to type that correctly, then added a gapped tooth to "smile" for interest. That's as close as I get to Synesthesia. Yeah, like "smile's" is the autonomic form any day of the week.
I do miss the "D'oh!" button after a corn roast.
I have an idea - read slashdot and write some comments.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. [...] 'Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.'
That makes no sense at all. Obviously it has to be below 10 percent to get to 10 percent, unless you're talking about a number of people spontaneously having the same idea at the same time.
That'd be nice, but observation suggests to me that less than 10% of the general population holds this view.
You can never get 'always' from statistics. Fundamentally you must bypass statistics if you want certainty. Read 'Common Statistical Errors and How to Avoid Them'.
John_Chalisque
This is silly.
They claim is that, below 10%, the idea can never catch on. But if you get over 10%, it will always catch on.
But ideas that are held by over 10% must once have been held by less than 10%.
So how is it that those under 10% ideas can never catch on? All ideas that have ever caught on, were once held by less than 10%!
What they've shown is that 10% of the simulated things in their computer can affect the state of other simulated things. They haven't shown what happens in the real world, other than that they need more money.
This pertains to new ideas. Most political and religious ideas are old. This pertains to specific ideas. For example, I think that evolution is a lot of ideas. I mean that you could simplify it by saying something like, "Evolution is the change over time in one or more inherited traits found in populations of organisms" (Wikipedia article 1st sentence), but while those ideas form a sort of 'clade,' they also have to be broken down and discussed to make sense. That sentence has 3 links to other Wikipedia articles (inherited traits, populations, and organisms), and it has a footnote. To give a (controversial) example of a simple-enough idea: I bet that if 10% of people believed that x company's (or government agency's) thorough plan for getting everyone in America to use electric cars was a completely perfect plan and would do their part to commit to said plan, then it would work.
i think the key explanation for me was, "If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief." Think about the kinds of ideas that you willing accept in this manner. I think an appropriate example for this model would be an idea such as, "I heard that the new XXX restaurant that opened is really good!" I think gossip would also fall into this category.