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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.
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.
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
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).
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
Probably has something to do with lack of sex with women.
I guess they mean that of those idea that catch on, the point was at 10%. More than 10% Americans "believe" in evolution, but I don't see it spreading like wildfire. There are plenty of ideas that have greater than 10% marketshare, but don't spread. But I guess of those ideas that are now majority, and were once minority or non-existent, the point where they spread was 10%. Even still, call me skeptical.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
that was my first instinct too. then i thought about the converse. "population" is a matter of perspective. in 10 people, 1 person is 10% of that population. I didn't RTFA, but i'd guess if 5% of a large population holds a belief, it's not going to gain traction, but if those 5% somehow come together there is a subpopulation where 10% or more hold the belief and can influence the rest. I imagine it works better the more that subpopulation can separate itself from the larger culture. This scenario does play out over and over.
of course, taken to extremes you could say 1 person in a population of 3 is 33% of the population so everyone should adopt that person's beliefs. that doesn't happen so the size of the population must be part of the function.
or it's all bunk
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?!
There are true geeks and poseur geeks, I think true geeks - with extraordinary talents and abilities - are closer to 1% of the total population. The other 9% you're talking about are just ordinary dysfunctionals who aspire to be geek-like, but never really amount to anything.
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."
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
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 guess they mean that of those idea that catch on, the point was at 10%. More than 10% Americans "believe" in evolution, but I don't see it spreading like wildfire.
But it did, originally. Only now there's 10% believing in Intelligent Design, so you're screwed.
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.
The idea may only need to be held by a small segment of the population; for example, the scientists in a specialised sub-discipline(~hundred or so people), the major media commentariat in a particular country of locality(~few hundred people), the academics in a wider field, e.g. economics (~few thousand people), or perhaps the opinions in a small sized nation.
I give you a good example: In Ireland (pop. ~4 million), the entire country went on a mad house buying binge, with the skeptics being ridiculed, ignored, or told by the nation's premier to go and commit suicide. Here's a retrospective blog post on the brazen insanity of those days. You'd kind of have to be from Ireland to get it all, but I think the Shamrock Island video explains itself.
Now, if you added up the people during the Celtic Tiger Boom who worked in the financial, construction, and property sectors, you'd pretty comfortably reach 400,000 people; ~10% of the population. And I can assure you that most of these people were indeed true believers in the idea that property prices would continue to grow forever. For any that weren't, the slack was picked up by overpaid public sector workers with property fetishes and the usual talking heads in the media. Ireland is a small country, so it was relatively easy to reach a 10% level in many sectors.
I stress that the eternal house price boom was a deeply held and virtually unassailable belief during the Celtic Tiger years. Skeptics were laughed at and ridiculed publically. Here's a quote from the article:
This was a few months after the country's major bank, Bank of Ireland, introduced 100%+ mortgages for buyers, which revved prices upwards again after the beginning of a brief slowdown.
This post is getting a little parochial, but to bring this back to the topic, I remind everyone that Ireland is now a bankrupted state in IMF hands, devastated by a massive property bust and credit crunch, with 5 out of 6 banks nationalised. This instance of "true believers" tipping over public opinion lead to the ruination of an entire country. I think its a good example of how the spread of ideas and ideologies can be damaging to societies, and why it's so important to challenge this spread in the early stages, because believe me, it's impossible to reverse things once the wildfire takes hold of the wider population.
May the Maths Be with you!
So either this guy is Hari Seldon and has a working theory of psychohistory, or this is mostly bullshit.
I've scrolled down this far, and no one has mentioned that the GOP and the Democrats each have that magic 10%. So - what does "science" have to say about opposing ideas, or ideologies, colliding? Hmmmm......
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
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
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?
In short, the paper repeats analysis and numerical simulations of a simplified 'agreement model'. People are abstracted as nodes on a graph, communication happens between them, and consensus is reached. If a graph is initialized randomly, with nodes 'believing' either A or B, eventually (in log(N) time) the graph reaches consensus with every node 'believing' A xor B.
This paper adds a twist; some fraction of nodes are 'committed' to A, and cannot ever be convinced of B. To quote the paper:
Now, if even one node cannot be convinced of B, then no consensus can be reached -- but it doesn't really matter. If the fraction is really small, then you can more or less ignore them.
The interesting part about that paper is their threshold effect -- once p gets to be over 10%, not only does A eventually win, but it does so -quickly-.
The applications to politics still hold, but not on the big, obvious issues. Those issues, like taxes and abortion and health care and anything else that really makes the news, have committed believers on both sides -- they're outside the scope of study. Where this research becomes really interesting is in quieter, uncontroversial issues -- like regulation details, or climage change before Al Gore. There, this research suggests that the influence of sockpuppetry and lobbying is nonlinear -- beyond a critical point, the lobbyists completely win.
Of course, caveats about "the real world isn't an abstract graph" apply.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
I think its a good example of how the spread of ideas and ideologies can be damaging to societies, and why it's so important to challenge this spread in the early stages, because believe me, it's impossible to reverse things once the wildfire takes hold of the wider population.
So, we're too late to sink Michelle Bachman? Maybe we should get those Shuttles working again.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Is Ireland really ruined? Does the sun not shine there anymore? Have the farms been destroyed by drought? Why can't you use the empty buildings to house the homeless? The real groupthink is that money can only be created by bankers, who must keep it artificially scarce so that wealth is defined in terms of the necessary existence of the poor. The radical idea (which I'm going to present without regard to whether it has 10% following or not) is that innovation should be the focus, that money games are based on psychology, and that the economic problem is not the central problem of mankind - knowledge acquisition is.
ROFL - let me sum up the Republican fairy tale - absolutely NO tax loopholes should be closed OR taxes raised though they are at lower levels now than when we were at peak prosperity, and the bulk of the unfunded debt (mostly incurred by Republicans who increased services for political gain, but would not increase taxes - also for political gain) should be gotten from so-called entitlements, so we can support our troops by sending them to die in godforsaken holes where we aren't welcome, so that we can steal some sweet crude, because there is no such thing as peak oil, pumping will go on forever, hydrocarbon fuels are all there is, and everything that is now, is forever. And after all, if you are poor enough to need the so-called entitlements, you are a shiftless layabout abusing the system. There are _always_ available jobs that pay housing, food, and medical bills after all.
Medical bankruptcy never happens because you can always get all treatment from the emergency room for free, and this also doesn't affect the economy the Fed get's it's revenue from. Medicare is unnecessary pork for the same 'reason'...
We can't afford to take care of our own, so we will default on SS and leave our elderly out on the ice so we can pay off the Chinese, but THAT's only good business. Corporations (even foreign) should have a legal say in our government and of course that's GREAT for government revenue since corporations - especially multinationals - are known for paying taxes, and never make deals so that they don't have to. Science as practiced by actual scientists is subject to religious and political dogma, and economic theory depends on unregulated businesses having many rights and no legal responsibilities.
To top it off, to compromise or doubt ANY of these things is a sin against St. Reagan and His Angels in the Tea Party.
Did I miss anything there, Rudolph? Oh yeah - to 'hope' or 'change' is a ridiculous notion that should be mocked at every turn.
"When expenditures are 49% more than revenues, it is obvious to those who do not believe in Santa Claus that knocking out a few tax loopholes is not going to balance the budget, and that the bulk of the solution lies in reducing expenditures"
Yes, that IS true. And moderates (NOT a dirty word, except to the Right) favor BOTH 'austerity' measures AND closing tax loopholes, as well as some modest tax increases (*gasp* maybe the government SHOULD be funded at the levels we had during peak prosperity after all! Maybe it was just changing the tax code to be more fair that was really needed, eh?). Fundamental extremists like yourself, however, would destroy any chance at all for anything above a third-world existence for future citizens in order to get your Libertarian wet-dreams fulfilled. Rather than invest in the American people to raise them up, you would make us 'competitive' with third world nations by dragging us _down_ to third world level, economically. Oh except for the wealthy. They are worthy of Santa Claus' free gifts, right? At least they won't have to import their desperate household help from illegal immigrant pools anymore, regardless. That's a step up, hey?
Idiot.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!