3 ms·
"tipping point" implies nothing of the sort. Schelling described no acceleration associated with it.
by randomcarbloke 7y ago
"tipping point" implies nothing of the sort.
Schelling described no acceleration associated with it.
- discreteevent 7y agoThen he has a very bad choice of language. Tipping point means physically that once it is reached then the scales (or whatever is in balance) tip 100% to the other side.
- wutbrodo 7y agoI don't think this is true. Per Wikipedia[1]: > The phrase was first used in sociology by Morton Grodzins when he adopted the phrase from physics where it referred to the adding a small amount of weight to a balanced object until the additional weight caused the object to suddenly and completely topple, or tip. Grodzins studied integrating American neighborhoods in the early 1960s. He discovered that most of the white families remained in the neighborhood as long as the comparative number of black families remained very small. But, at a certain point, when "one too many" black families arrived, the remaining white families would move out en masse in a process known as white flight. He called that moment the "tipping point". The idea was expanded and built upon by Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Schelling in 1972. As one would guess from the common usage of the phrase, as well as the physical analogy itself, a tipping point is indeed a threshold that causes an acceleration (sometimes described as the specific case of a binary flip). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(sociology)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(sociology)#Hist...