Scientists Calculate Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas

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afrobacon

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So if I can convince 10% of Tom's employee's to donate their test equipment to me the whole company will follow suit.. Or did I read that wrong?
 

Albyint

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[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]So how many people in Tom's Hardware should we convince to GET RID OF THE FRACKING SPAMS????[/citation]

Indeed good sir.
 

cats_Paw

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That theory has little to no value at all. Ideas and social movements dont start or end on a certain date. So it is impossible to calculate the result of two ideas that appear at the same time, even if they are talking about totally diffrent things. This is especially clear in todays twitter trends. "If something wont catch your interest enought to tweet about it when you see it, you wont try to find it later, becouse you already have a lot of other stuff to think about.
 

Niva

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This is certainly not the case with Religion, by current statistics over 10% (closer to 20) of the US population is atheist/agnostic. Yet religious nutcases dominate politics. Tell these scientists to quit wasting their time and do some productive research.
 

BlueFireAngel

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You've got to be kidding if you can't see the value of this insight! I will grant you that the money the study used could have been better spent, but that is primarily because a similar study was done before.
@cats_paw: This isn't about when something starts, it's about how quickly it goes from a belief shared by few to an idea accpeted by the majority. For example, shortly after mp3 players started to emerge, two companies created competing products: Apple iPod and Creative Labs Zen. If you would have looked at the reviews and compared products, the Zen would probably have been the better choice. However, Apple was better at marketing. I don't know what the numbers were, but when Apple won the marketing game they won the market share and the iPod became the mp3 player of choice.
The same thing is happening with Apple's iOS and WebOS and Android. Apple's offering is not necessarily the best but it has the market share and will continue until one or the other of the competing OS's gains enough of the market to be truely competative.
@Niva: I would argue that you are seeing more people leaving Religion. Even if the numbers are small now (
 

kikireeki

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How did the unshakable believers reach 10% in the first place? This study could be right if the 10% has fallen from the sky. but if this percentage is a result of a Progressive spread (which is most likely the case), then this study makes no sense, unless we are talking about spread acceleration .
 

ikefu

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How do competing ideas work in this model though?

Just to use the obvious choice. Greater then 10% of the population are Christians, yet greater than 10% are also atheist. So if two competing ideas are above the tipping point, who wins?
 

sseyler

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[citation][nom]kikireeki[/nom]How did the unshakable believers reach 10% in the first place? This study could be right if the 10% has fallen from the sky. but if this percentage is a result of a Progressive spread (which is most likely the case), then this study makes no sense, unless we are talking about spread acceleration .[/citation]

Maybe the article wasn't perfectly clear, but the conclusion about how that 10% arises should be obvious, no? The whole point is that if ~10% of the population holds onto the same idea, then that idea will spread naturally by the "forces" of word-of-mouth. That original 10% can arise through vigorous marketing, maybe through a speech by a significant person, etc. I'm sure this doesn't apply to every scenario possible (let's be reasonable) - the important thing to take away from this study is the fact that only one tenth of a population needs to be convinced of an idea for the idea's spread to be self-sustaining and (initially) exponential.
 

sseyler

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[citation][nom]ikefu[/nom]How do competing ideas work in this model though?Just to use the obvious choice. Greater then 10% of the population are Christians, yet greater than 10% are also atheist. So if two competing ideas are above the tipping point, who wins?[/citation]


This is a good point. Maybe the study dealt with cases of multiple competing ideas, but the article chose to leave that out for brevity. Or maybe the study will be extended to other circumstances like the one you've just described.
 

dalethepcman

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its a computer model.. If two diametrically opposed ideas are input with the same starting 10% using the same rules, then they will both meet at 50% and get stuck. the only thing that would sway the tide in one direction or another is the randomness of the program to pick when the hubs or super hubs get converted that might speed up one opinion or the other.
 

f-14

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computer models are only as good as the people that designed them, and nobody is perfect therefore they are all seriously flawed and doomed to die.
example how often is the weather forecast right? they are all computer models.
the guys making the weather forecasts as also the ones feeding the global warming b.s.
guess they missed the point in there being dinosaur fossils and other fossils of tropical species in the deep tundra.
what happens to end an ice age = it starts warming up until the poles are tropical. what happens to start an ice age?= it starts cooling down from the tropical climate at the poles.
how many ice ages have there been? = 3 that we know of.
idiots can't predict the weather despite the fact they have previous models for the last billion years of the same 4 cycles winter spring summer fall.
oh that's right they think they have things all figured out based on just 60 years of information from the fallible electronic age.

oh wait maybe they are studying this study idea they threw out right now on all us guinea pigs to see if it fly's despite it's oink oink.
 

liveonc

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I need to convince 10% of the Online Community that if you bought a smartphone so you could make calls, send SMS', have a GPS, go Online everywhere, take pictures, record videos, listen to MP3s, & play Angry Birds. You now need a tablet so you could make calls, send SMS', have a GPS, go Online Everywhere, take pictures, record videos, listen to MP3s, & play Angry Birds... ;-)
 
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