
What neurons tell us about the 'hipster effect' when contrarians look the same - huherto
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/11/11/the-mathematician-who-proved-why-hipsters-all-look-alike/
======
tunesmith
This is a funny rephrasing of "systems thinking". Donella Meadows, stocks and
flows, etc. When you introduce a delay into adjusting flows, oscillations
happen. The classic example is the shower faucet when the hot water heater is
too far away from the spigot - you find yourself making it too hot, then too
cold, etc.

~~~
antsar
[OT/Pedantry] The shower faucet thing is caused by a large distance between
the spigot (where the hot/cold mixing happens) and the shower head, not
between the water heater and spigot.

~~~
tjradcliffe
[Pedantry^2] Both effects are important on different timescales. When first
starting a shower, the distance between the hot water tank and the spigot is
what matters, and this tends to produce a long-period oscillation that
manifests as just a single over-shoot at the start. Then there is a short-
period oscillation due to the tap/spigot distance.

The initial transient is still technically an "oscillation" in the sense it is
described by the same mathematics, even though it's a one-off.

------
twelfthnight
It seems to me the reason hipsters all look the same is because we tend to
lump things together that resemble each other 'close enough'. If a person has
thick glasses but is wearing a backward cap, are they a 'bro' or a hipster? It
will probably depend on whether there are other hipsters around--if there are,
you'll define that person as hipster. If that person is in a sports bar with
bros, then you might say that person is a bro.

~~~
emotionalcode
We also tend to make comparisons between ourselves and things that are not
ourselves as if they are discrete entities.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
This. For example, I thought bros were hipsters and vice versa.

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freyr
The idea that any identifiable subculture could be composed of nonconformists
seems obviously false. The subculture as a whole could represent a break from
the mainstream, but it could only be identified as a subculture once its
members have conformed to a set of common traits.

It's interesting that the article was written in 2008, at which point hipsters
were already ripe for critique, but we're still talking about them. There may
be more microbrews and less PBR, more thick-rimmed glasses and fewer
keffiyehs, more discussion of Kanye West than indie rock -- but it still is
distinctly "hipster." Maybe a subculture based on cooption and ironic
detachment is particularly well suited to evolve with changing environmental
conditions.

Another possible reason for its staying power is that other subcultures have
typically made a person look increasingly ridiculous / marginalized /
unemployable as they aged (goth, punk, gangster rap, rave), whereas hipster
style trends play it relatively safe.

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Animats
This is similar to a common experiment you can program. Create a grid, and
fill it about 95% full with random black and white squares, leaving about 5%
empty. Each square has 8 neighbors. If a square at least N neighbors of a
different color, it moves to a randomly selected empty square. Iterate this
for a while, until stability occurs.

You're watching segregation happen. Try different values of N. Even with N=8,
meaning nobody moves unless every neighbor is the opposite color, you'll still
get a mostly segregated world.

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hyperbovine
I don't remember there being any actual proofs in that paper although I only
skimmed it. There were a couple of equations and some hand-wavy "it can be
shown using... it is not hard to show" remarks. This is the kind of paper that
my pure math friends would deride as "physics math" :-)

~~~
xico
The whole paper is a proof with the displayed equations representing the key
points and solutions. The ‘remarks’ that seem to annoy you are merely the
author adjectives to qualify the underlying approach, and to avoid the trivial
(for the author) intermediate steps. I highly doubt that you and your
‘friends’ are going to find a single mathematical mistake in this humoristic
paper (the actual work of the author being quite full of your standard
Lemma/Theorem/Proof sectioning without which you seem to be lost).

~~~
hyperbovine
I did not claim that the paper contained any mistakes. Rigorous proofs do much
more than simply eliminate the possibility of mistakes (though they do that
too); they make the argument accessible to a wider mathematically literate
audience who may not be familiar with techniques which are standard in the
author's field. I know a not-inconsiderable amount of graduate-level
probability and a bit of stat phys and yet still this paper is not a trivial
read. I'm sure if I stared at it for a day I could figure out the entire
argument, but the point is I don't have a whole day. Theorems and Lemmas are a
protocol for mathematicians to communicate efficiently. Considering the level
of offense you have summoned up, I assume you must be in some mathematical
field, so I am surprised you do not appreciate this.

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eevilspock
His premise that hipsters are nonconformists is false.

AdBusters has a great article on this: _Hipster: The Dead End of Western
Civilization_
[https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html](https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html)

~~~
the_cat_kittles
that was an interesting article, though i dont understand the grave tone. what
are the actual problems and harm that come of it? people want to feel special,
unique, original and authentic... or at least look the part. so what? trying
to achieve that by dressing the right way and going to ironic parties is
silly, and kind of pointless, but i think thats just "kids being kids". people
are usually more shallow when they are young, and deepen as they get older.
the writer seems to be committing the bigger mistake by thinking all the
hipsters discussed in the article aren't just normal kids looking for a social
group. he treats them like a disease- thats a shitty way to talk about someone
who hasn't done anything actually harmful.

~~~
freyr
_that was an interesting article, though i dont understand the grave tone._

Most likely, the grave tone is intended to be ironic. The article adopts the
perennial complaint that "the new generation is the worst generation." But
Adbusters has a hipster readership, and magazine targeting their fan base is
ironic. Hipsters thrive on irony.

The article even describes a woman who fits every hipster cliché, including
being critical other hipsters and refusing to self-identify as a hipster, and
the magazine/article does exactly the same. Oh, the irony. Finally, a Google
image search of the author reveals a young mustachioed man who is, to judge a
book by its cover, himself a hipster.

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meow_mix
This quote: “That’s the real role of mathematics,” Touboul said. “To abstract
things. To see what is really important.” Is concentrating on things like this
really important?

~~~
tikhonj
In this case, the whole "hipsters" angle was just a cute hook to make the
paper more interesting. In reality, it's a neat model of _many_ different
dynamic system and a useful mathematical abstraction in and of itself. Even if
we didn't have an immediate application _now_ , it would be useful as math and
clearly increase the "sum of human knowledge". It's impossible to predict
exactly where this idea will lead in the future, whether interesting
applications or more math, so it's worth working on just speculatively.

Of course, in this case, it also has an immediate application in neuroscience,
which is useful in a visceral sort of way that's easier to appreciate.

~~~
barce
I totally agree. Replace "non-comformist" and "conformist" in this paper with
"predator" and "prey," and you can speculate on some more interesting
biological ideas.

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MrBuddyCasino
So a random imbalance in a binary pattern triggers an oscillation, if the
delay is big enough, because the hipsters all try to be non-conformists.

I don't think the delays in real life fashion cycles are what is causing
lookalikes, I think people do try to conform to fit a certain subculture. Con-
conformist hipsters are a rare breed, as it takes lot a of effort and style
savvy. Always happy to see one!

------
jgrahamc
This is interesting, but surely not the reason why group X (for any X) all
look alike. Members of any group X will look alike because they decide to in
order to be part of that group.

X can be hipsters, goths, British bankers, Roman Catholic parents from
Versailles, programmers living in San Francisco, ...

~~~
serve_yay
It's even simpler than that- the word "hipster" is meaningless by itself so
you choose a bunch of people who all look the same, categorize them as
"hipster", and they all look the same by tautology.

~~~
tormeh
Of course. The word derives its meaning from the thing it is assigned to.
Doesn't make bearded, tracksuit-wearing, mechanical video camera-wielding men
talking way too much about authenticity look less like clowns, though.

~~~
logfromblammo
Except that clown makeup patterns are considered a form of trademark among
performers, and are registered with Clowns International by painting them on
goose eggs, or egg-shaped ceramics. It's very bad form for one clown to design
a look that is too similar to another.

I suppose if an enterprising performer designed a character-type clown based
on a caricature of hipsters, they might all look like that particular clown,
but I don't think it's fair to slight a profession that encourages _authentic
individuality_ in that way.

------
guelo
This is a mathematical model with no experimentation behind it. Basically, a
hypothesis. The next step would be for social scientists to device some field
experiments.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8556253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8556253)

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spydum
so bringing it back to the brain, does this suggest that certain cases of
epilepsy are due to neuron signalling delays relative to non-epileptic brains?
if so.. that certainly is interesting. It may explain why some epileptics
"grow out" of it, as their neurons build new connections, and signal delays
get lower.

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coldcode
This type of work makes me wish I were a mathematician instead of a
programmer.

~~~
eksith
At their base level both have similarities: Expressing and parsing the world
in a funny language.

But seriously, there's a lot of math in programming that we wouldn't even
consider to be "math" in the general sense.

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sauere
Didn't we just have this on the front page a few weeks ago?

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DonHopkins
This reminds me of Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactions, which can be modeled by
cellular automata, or realized by chemical reactions, slime molds, and coral
reefs. (Of course, after staring at them for as many hours as I have,
everything reminds me of Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactions! ;)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction)

The essence of a cellular automata rule that exhibits BZ reactions is:

There are two forces at work playing off against each other: stimulation and
inhibition. Stimulation is implemented by observing your local surrounding
neighbors. Inhibition is implemented by a delay. The result is beautiful
spiraling oscillations!

A cell can be stimulated or quiescent (one bit). And it has a timer to
remember how long ago it was stimulated (typically another bit). When it's
quiescent, and the stimulation condition is true, it becomes stimulated, and
sets the timer. In subsequent steps, it finishes being stimulated, then the
timer expires, and it can't be stimulated again until the timer expires.

The stimulation condition is usually a counting rule, like Life: it sums the
number of stimulated neighbors, and then uses that to index into a look-up
table to decide its next state.

The effect is that waves of stimulation spread out throughout the medium, and
the wave's leading edge propagates into areas that are not stimulated, until
it hits another wave, and they cancel each other out or reflect waves in other
directions.

The trailing edge of the wave is caused by the inhibition, and consists of
cells that have just been stimulated and won't be stimulated again immediately
-- that way the wave spreads in one direction instead of all directions at
once.

By changing the stimulation condition, you can generate different shapes of
waves, which usually develop into interlocking spirals forming around stable
nucleation patterns.

One metaphor for how this rule works is to the worm-like animals in a coral
reef, who come out of their shells to feed, then pull back inside their shells
when tickled by adjacent worms pulling back, only to come back out after a
short time. That's why this particular CA rule is called "WORMS" (in Toffoli
and Margolus's "Cellular Automata Machines" book).

Here's some JavaScript code that implements three kind of worms, with three
different kinds of stimulus conditions (alarms), which I call "Yuppy Worms",
"Hipster Worms" and "Bohemian Worms":

[https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...](https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM6.js#L5293)

The "Yuppy Worms" are all uptight, geometrical and diagonal. The "Hipster
Worms" are more relaxed and rounded. And the "Bohemian Worms" are all rough
and fuzzy and organic.

    
    
            // The personality is a key into the dict of alarm arrays,
            // which are indexed by the count of excited neighbors,
            // and contain 1 if the cell should be excited or 0 if
            // not.
            var alarms = {
    
                // This results in spirals with tight straight diagonal diamonds.
                yuppie:   [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
    
                // This results in spirals with loose smooth rounded diamonds.
                hipster:  [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
    
                // This results in spirals with looser rustic fuzzy spirals.
                // That is due to the anneal-like discontinuity in the alarm table.
                bohemian: [0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
    
            }[personality];
    

The Yuppie and Hipster look-up tables vote with the majority (for different
definitions of majority), while the "anneal-like discontinuity" in the
Bohemian alarm table is kind of like a non-conformist tie-breaker voting the
other way when the vote is almost even (which is the essence of the "anneal"
CA rule). That causes turbulence and roughness, so it looks much more organic
than geometric.

~~~
stygiansonic
Great observation! Those state-transition diagrams had me instantly thinking
of The Game of Life.

~~~
DonHopkins
[http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/](http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6/)

Click the gray rectangle in the upper left corner.

Click "Rules" on the bar.

Select "Eco Heat" from the "Rule" menu.

Click and drag in the cells to draw!

Use the mouse wheel or drag two fingers up and down the trackpad to add and
subtract heat from the system. (You might tweak "Rules" / "Frob Scale" towards
zero to make it less sensitive.)

The "ANNEAL" rule running in one plane defines where land and water are, and
the land and water areas quickly congeal into continents and oceans like the
spots on a cow.

The "BRAIN" rule runs in the water.

The 1's complement of the LIFE rule ("DEATH") runs on land.

They interact along the shores, stimulating each other where they meet.

The higher 5 bit planes are running a heat diffusion, which the ANNEAL, BRAIN
and DEATH rules inject heat into.

So it's like the little organisms generate pollution that diffuses into the
environment!

Play around with "Rules" / "Frob Target" to continuously add or subtract heat
(pollution) from the environment.

Look at the histogram below and see if you can adjust it to get an
equilibrium.

Once the pollution rises (or lowers) to a certain level in a cell, it wraps
around to zero and kills any organism in that cell, and toggles between land
and water, which can cause some interesting phase transitions and disasters of
biblical proportions!

Oh, and you can click in the histogram to set the cell drawing value!

