Tagged: experiment

Chains

We were arguing energetically about whether the world is actually
evolving, headed in a particular direction, or whether the entire
universe is just a returning rhythm’s game, a renewal of eternity.
“There has to be something of crucial importance,” I said in the
middle of debate. “I just don’t quite know how to express it in a
new way; I hate repeating myself.”

The concept of Six Degrees of Separation was made famous by Stanley Milgram’s Small World experiments in the 1960s, and has been popularised by the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

However, the idea of a Small World appeared much earlier, in 1929, in a curious short story called Lancszemek (Chains) by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. Click here to download a PDF of the English translation.

Kevin Bacon has a Bacon number of 0

I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. fill in the names. I find that A) tremendously comforting that we’re so close and B) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close. Because you have to find the right six people to make the connection. It’s not just big names. It’s anyone. A native in a rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It’s a profound thought. How Paul found us. How to find the man whose son he pretends to be. Or perhaps is his son, although I doubt it. How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds. Six degrees of separation between me and everyone else on this planet. But to find the right six people.

– Six Degrees of Separation

The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a small-world-type network characterized by short path-lengths. The experiments are often associated with the phrase “six degrees of separation“, although Milgram did not use this term himself.

– Small-world Experiment

 

This is How it Works: This is Not How it Works

“My advice: stop using “this is how it works” as a defense, or an excuse. Use it as motivation. Use it as a guide for where you should coming from. Use it as a starting point: “this is how it works today, but this is how we want it to work tomorrow, and this is how we want it to work the next day.” That begs the question: how? Experiment, create, believe in what you know and the inspiration found all around us. Let your imagination and creativity run wild. Let innovation rule the day, even if it’s risky and cautious, show the world that anyone can reinvent the way things work as long as they stop preventing themselves from living in a closed off world of “this is how it works” so don’t even try anything else.”
— Alex Billington, This is How it Works: This is Not How it Works