

'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' Provides Clue to Efficiency of the Internet - Anon84
http://www.ddj.com/web-development/212101315?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All

======
moxy
I can recall an article I read a few months ago, where a couple of researchers
took data from an instant messaging service and found that there was, on
average, a ~6.6 degree separation between parties.

Just found it. Here you go:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7539329.stm>

------
Allocator2008
Love this. Determining how these "hidden metric spaces" arise in neural
networks during the course of evolution could have great impact on the
understanding of the brain. Dan Dennett talks of consciousness as a "meme
machine" made up of lots of little unconscious "robots" or neurons. Perhaps
this is not the entire story though. Perhaps the neurons have evolved to
maximize efficiency in communication by means of some hidden metric space. I
wonder if associations of "synchronicity" could come into play here. Say
neuron A wants to get a signal to Location L following some Input I. Neuron A
doesn't know Location L but knows that Neuron B always fires when something
happens in L. So it sends the signal over to Neuron B, which, sure enough,
passes it along to L, therefore, Neuron A is able to get the signal following
a certain input over to L without knowing exactly the topological connections
to L. Of course words like "know" and "want" are used metaphorically,
obviously this arises dynamically via blind trial and error. So Dennett's
robots take on a new layer of interest: perhaps by being able to form
associations between temporally or spatially related events, they can
construct signal patterns via a "hidden metric space" for better efficiency.
Figuring out how this additional efficiency comes about by figuring out how
these hidden connections evolve could make artificial neural nets more
efficient. Right now, I think neural nets are largely "brute force" - add more
neurons for better results. But perhaps hidden metric spaces could help us get
better results from the same neuron number. Anyway. Way cool.

------
weegee
I remember looking at that page in 1999.

