
Research Finds Tipping Point for Large-Scale Social Change - nabla9
https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-tipping-point-large-scale-social-change
======
motohagiography
There are a number of precedents for this using game theory and simpler
models:

Salience Models: [https://pmstudycircle.com/2015/09/salience-model-to-
analyze-...](https://pmstudycircle.com/2015/09/salience-model-to-analyze-
project-stakeholders/)

Predictioneers Game Model: [http://harvardpolitics.com/books-arts/the-
mathematical-proph...](http://harvardpolitics.com/books-arts/the-mathematical-
prophet/)

Attacker Defender Games:
[https://imowensims.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/attacker-
defende...](https://imowensims.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/attacker-defender-
games-an-introduction/)

When you add Nassim Taleb's "intolerant minority," rule
([https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-
of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)) I would be willing to bet you could
reconstruct much of that this research as described is proposing.

I like graphs for a lot of things, and I think they are going to supercharge
our ability to learn things. However, while expressing this research as a
graph sounds interesting, if you take the view that pretty much everything
that can be expressed as objects and morphisms can therefore be expressed as a
graph, and there is a bunch of game theory that already describes this, it's
possible the graphyness of any proposition is illustrative, and not evidence.

I'm looking forward to the paper and am glad the author has been able to
articulate this phenomenon in a popular way, but the press release has
triggered a cynical intuition.

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TangoTrotFox
The cliff notes of the study are provided in the article:

 _In this study, “Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social
Convention,” coauthored by Joshua Becker, Ph.D., Devon Brackbill, Ph.D., and
Andrea Baronchelli, Ph.D., 10 groups of 20 participants each were given a
financial incentive to agree on a linguistic norm. Once a norm had been
established, a group of confederates — a coalition of activists that varied in
size — then pushed for a change to the norm.

When a minority group pushing change was below 25% of the total group, its
efforts failed. But when the committed minority reached 25%, there was an
abrupt change in the group dynamic, and very quickly the majority of the
population adopted the new norm. In one trial, a single person accounted for
the difference between success and failure._

Though I'm quite curious why they call this a study in "large scale social
change" and not just peer pressure? I have no idea how to possibly design an
experiment for "large scale social change" but if I was going to create an
experiment for peer pressure this seems to be just about exactly what I would
do. Though even there it might be a bit sketchy. Mercenaries don't tend to be
particularly loyal to the country they're fighting for, and 'providing a
financial incentive to agree on a linguistic norm' is creating linguistic
mercenaries.

Another issue that I hope they are being forthright about is "majority." If
25% of the population is made up of confederates are they describing a
majority as 50% of the total (confederate + subjects) population? If that's
the case then it undermines its own conclusion as it only means that 1/3rd of
the subjects actually changed their view. This is something that should be
obvious, but just the phrasing makes me wonder and the study itself is
paywalled so I can't check.

~~~
mc32
I’d be curious to know how this would apply to group dynamics in company
meetings. Often it’s very hard for an outside idea to be considered seriously.

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FrozenVoid
An experiment demonstrating "rapid social change" wasn't competing with
anything substantial - it was temporary belief sets vs temporary belief sets.

Social change that is against a dominant narrative, mainstream culture or
religion will be much harder.

~~~
morelandjs
They acknowledge this limitation in the conclusion. Clearly, if the competing
labels are "I identify as American" versus "I identify as Chinese", the
empirical C=25% fraction would be nonsense.

A reasonable real world comparison might be, "What is the fraction of women we
need in programming to create a phase change."

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lou1306
By the way, "opinion formation" is a pretty well-established area of research
in theoretical computer science that studies stuff like this. You start with a
graph where each node has some opinion that might change based on that of its
neighbours. Then you either prove something about the steady state thanks to
graph-teoretical stuff, or you run simulations and see what happens. The
"committed" individuals (ie. those who never change their opinion) are known
as zealots.

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Animats
From Wikipedia:

 _" Surveys show that Americans without a religious affiliation (which include
'nothing particular', agnostic, atheist) range around 21%, 23%, 25%, 31%, 34%
and 21% of the population, with 'nothing in particulars' making up the
majority of this demographic. Since the early 1990s, independent polls have
shown the rapid growth of those without a religious affiliation."_

We're almost there on religion.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_States)

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mooneater
This might imply that democrats should move to very republican towns, marry
into republican families, and join republican churches.

~~~
lopmotr
Meanwhile, republicans should do the opposite, reversing the country's
democrat-republican split. Since you want to achieve a one-party state, an
easier and guaranteed effective way would be to move to Russia or China.

~~~
mooneater
Actually, my personal view is that in general more diverse views are better.
My assumption is the places I mentioned could benefit from more diverse views.
Maybe partly why cosmopolitan cities tend to be more liberal.

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hosh
Some questions I had while reading this article (have not read the paper)

1\. Is the number actual number of people in a population or percieved number
of people? That is, can someone generate fake social media accounts, inject a
belief, and make it seem as if something reaches the tipping point?

2\. Does this tipping point vary by culture? For example, when I read about
American techies working in Japan, they speak about the excessive meetings,
and consensus making that happens in companies. Do social changes require more
people? Or is it that, that tipping point remains about the same, yet fewer
people are likely to voice something in the first place?

3\. What happens when you have multiple activist groups who are each above the
tipping point, each advocating for some change?

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jancsika
I wonder how bad faith affects this. I'm thinking of the following areas:

* Sybil attacks/sock puppets. If I notice momentum gaining against my position, I either split my team into 2 avatars per team member, or pay astoturfers.

* assymetric warfare. If I notice momentum gaining against my position, I use my superior knowledge of the medium. For example, I use tools so that my sock puppets always get the first post, and other techniques shown to have a big influence on participants.

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znpy
The actual paper is paywalled, so meh, I don't really know what the paper
says.

I only know what the author of the article says the paper says.

So yeah, unless some of you have access to the PDF and want to share it, we're
only discussing about an interpretation of a paper, not the paper itself.

(yeah, I know sci-hub exists)

