🍅 Biases, Memes, Viral Trends, and Rumours!
Whom will you Copy today?
Introduction
- John Donne, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
From https://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/famous/no-man-is-an-island
The words ‘No man is an island’ were embedded in a deeply Christian sermon about how human beings are connected to each other, and how important that connection is for the wellbeing and survival of any individual. When you hear the church bell tolling for someone who has died, don’t ask who it is, Donne says, just know that it’s tolling for you too because you are part of the same society and the death of anyone takes a part of your own life away.
Does the Bell toll for thee?
The Game of the Polygons
Let us explore, sadly, the dark side of Game Theory. Where our own
agent-like actions lead to bad outcomes in Society…
Always?
Not if we…choose to copy others wisely !!
Let us play The Game of the Polygons (web link)
Conclusions
- Individual Actions Matter. Because they can be “reverse infections” and be contagious, in a positive way.
- Correlations between Individual Actions can create “standing waves” or “echoes” on the fabric of society.
- Whatsapp “echo chambers”
- Popularity of Memes, Songs, and Movie lines
- Taglines from Ads, and Products ( e.g. “Think Different”. Bah.)
References
- Henderson, Ron. 12 June 2022. Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols: The struggle for distinction. https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Accessed 07 Jan 2024.
- The Network Effects Bible. https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-bible
- Mitchell Resnick. Beyond the Centralized Mindset. https://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/JLS/JLS-1.0.html
- Thomas W. Valente.(2012). Network Interventions. Science(337) 49. Available here https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/science.1217330
The term “network interventions” describes the process of using social network data to accelerate behavior change or improve organizational performance. In this Review, four strategies for network interventions are described, each of which has multiple tactical alternatives.
- Nicholas Christakis. (May 3, 2024). To exploit social contagion, tools are needed to efficiently identify individuals who are better able to initiate cascades. To be maximally useful, such tools should be deployable without having to actually map face-to-face social network interactions. https://t.co/DHCKxXeGYg.
This is a paper that presents design tools that exploit the “Friendship Paradox” to create Social Contagion. A quick summary of the paper is available here. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi5147