Having 10% believers WILL convert us all. Not 'can'

[FBM]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 190044.htm

Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas

ScienceDaily (July 25, 2011) — Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.

When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority," said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. "Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame."

As an example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process, according to Szymanski. "In those countries, dictators who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few weeks."

The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E in an article titled "Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities."

An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.

To reach their conclusion, the scientists developed computer models of various types of social networks. One of the networks had each person connect to every other person in the network. The second model included certain individuals who were connected to a large number of people, making them opinion hubs or leaders. The final model gave every person in the model roughly the same number of connections. The initial state of each of the models was a sea of traditional-view holders. Each of these individuals held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.

Once the networks were built, the scientists then "sprinkled" in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.

"In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models," said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models "talked" to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener's belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.

"As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change," Sreenivasan said. "People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn't change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10."

The research has broad implications for understanding how opinion spreads. "There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing opinion," said Associate Professor of Physics and co-author of the paper Gyorgy Korniss. "Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the prevention of disease in a rural village."

The researchers are now looking for partners within the social sciences and other fields to compare their computational models to historical examples. They are also looking to study how the percentage might change when input into a model where the society is polarized. Instead of simply holding one traditional view, the society would instead hold two opposing viewpoints. An example of this polarization would be Democrat versus Republican.

The research was funded by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) through SCNARC, part of the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS-CTA), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

The research is part of a much larger body of work taking place under SCNARC at Rensselaer. The center joins researchers from a broad spectrum of fields -- including sociology, physics, computer science, and engineering -- in exploring social cognitive networks. The center studies the fundamentals of network structures and how those structures are altered by technology. The goal of the center is to develop a deeper understanding of networks and a firm scientific basis for the newly arising field of network science. More information on the launch of SCNARC can be found at http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenter ... ar=page(1)

Szymanski, Sreenivasan, and Korniss were joined in the research by Professor of Mathematics Chjan Lim, and graduate students Jierui Xie (first author) and Weituo Zhang.

[FBM]

Oh, I forgot to add my own 2c.

Lots of atheists reject the claim that atheism is a belief. In light of the study above, maybe we'd be better off touting it as a belief?

[Animavore]

No.

[FBM]

Why not?

[Animavore]

Because it isn't.

[FBM]

Speaking only for myself, I actually believe that there are no gods. I don't have proof of this non-existence, but I still firmly believe it. For me, it's a belief about the ultimate nature of the world; one that has no supernatural aspects. I believe, despite lack of conclusive evidence. Why is that not a belief? True, it's not the same order of belief as theism, but I'm not ashamed to call it belief. I'm steadfastly sure I'm right and no theist will convince me otherwise.

[Animavore]

Well that's you. When it comes to gods I have nothing but severe doubt. It falls just short of certainty but I just can't positively push that last shred of unsurity. I live my life like there's no gods and reject outright spurious claims of things attributed which haven't passed a minimum requirement for evidence but this is the antithesis of believe.

[FBM]

Publically, I say the same thing, because inductive reasoning can never be 100%. But privately, I'm 100% convinced. I know I can't prove there are no gods, but the fact remains that I'm secretly 100% certain of it, to be honest. I know it's a belief, but I think we can't manage daily life without them. There's no way to prove everything before you act. Theism has given belief a bad rep.

[Robert_S]

I believe there are no gods as described by any of the scriptures I've seen. You can take some ideas and semi-anthropomorphize them like the more modern theologians do, but that's not about belief really.

However I do believe in the beautiful Ratz goddesses.

[Warren Dew]

Oh, I forgot to add my own 2c.

Lots of atheists reject the claim that atheism is a belief. In light of the study above, maybe we'd be better off touting it as a belief?

I don't think their experiment models the kind of open mindedness I have.

Their experiment assumes that open minded people change their opinions to conform to neighbors' opinions - like lemmings, or sheeple.

I change my opinions based on empirical observation and logic. Their model doesn't model that. To their model, my opinion looks "unshakeable" because I'm never going to change it just because of unsupported assertions by others.

[FBM]

Good point, Warren. I wonder how many people IRL are so demanding of evidence or actually take the time to deeply examine the beliefs of their peers.

[Hermit]

The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. ...

When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority," said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. "Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame."

That just does not make sense. All beliefs and ideas start at zero % + one individual, so some of them obviously do not "literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority." Furthermore, there are many instances where majority opinion of beliefs evaporate to amount to next to nothing. The scientists' hypothesis of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center at Rensselaer ought to be dismissed for being one of the most meaningless and nonsensical propositions ever made. It has no explanatory nor any predictive power.

[FBM]

I'm not sure that literally "all" beliefs start out at 0% + 1, but almost certainly less than 10%. Then there's their model population. I think it doesn't reflect real populations well enough to be accurate. Populations constantly change and people don't behave so predictably. Their model is too over-simplified to be useful.

Yeah. Useless.

[Atheist-Lite]

I'm sure I could manage it with 1% if I had access to state run media and a few well organised, armed yet nice, sidekicks.

[JimC]

Deep down, I suspect that this reflects a human tendency to respond to the emotional intensity of a person expressing a belief. Committed true believers can exert an almost hypnotic effect on a very significant number of people.

In comparison, atheist viewpoints are usually expressed at a relatively low level of emotional intensity...