4 ms·
Excellent paper. TL;DR Majority illusion paradox occurs when many people are observing a small and loud group "saying" something that is actually globally rare
by pcunite 11y ago
Excellent paper.
TL;DR
Majority illusion paradox occurs when many people are observing a small and loud group "saying" something that is actually globally rare. Imagine 100 people who all observe three people who say the same things.
Own a media company and get people to believe in junk. Find the most connected individuals among a group and make them "active". If an "inactive" person perceives .5 of their connections are active they may switch to the active state themselves.
The "type" of network can affect the perceptions.
- SilasX 11y agoIsn't that basically the phenomenon that all PR evangelists use to get an idea out?
- pcunite 11y agoWell, you can "say" something over a channel but that does not "create" the perception that it is popular. So, this paper describes how things are perceived as popular when they are not really popular in a "numerical" sense. When Johnny says "everyone" is doing it, what he means is that all of the people he listens too are saying that "everyone" is doing it. In fact, only 2 people are doing it.
- m-photonic 11y agoAnd all successful activists.
- Sven7 11y agoI have a feeling Karl Rove and David Axelrod know this quite well.
- shasta 11y agoExcellent paper? This seems like an observation one could make in the shower and publish as a tweet.
- readme 11y agoAgreed. It's basically the well known "vocal minority" idea just applied to graph theory. I did not learn anything new from reading it.
- azernik 11y agoNot necessarily vocal, just well-connected.
- reagency 11y agoIt is uploaded to arxiv. It won't be published in a journal, since it is a trivial and non-novel result that _broadcasters_ have a larger audience than non-famous people.
- learnstats2 11y agoAs someone who has published a graph theory paper (in a journal), I doubt this is far away from being state of the art work. A lot of people are trying to apply graph theory in wild situations where it doesn't belong, yet this basic work on social networks and social graphs hasn't been studied in an academic way.