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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">The
following article hits the motherlode when it comes to our past discussions of
Ur patterns, iteration, and fracticality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Ur patterns are those that show up on multiple levels of emergence,
patterns that make anthropomorphism a reasonable way of doing science, patterns
that explain why a metaphor can capture in its word-picture the underlying
structure of a whirlwind, a brain-spin, or a culture-shift.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Here’s how a pattern in the molecules of magnets repeats
itself in the mass moodswings of human beings.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Howard</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">etrieved May 6, 2005, from the World Wide Web<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624984.200 HOME |NEWS
|EXPLORE BY SUBJECT |LAST WORD |SUBSCRIBE |SEARCH |ARCHIVE |RSS |JOBS<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Click to PrintOne law rules dedicated
followers of fashion 06 May 2005<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Mark Buchanan<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>FADS, <B>fashions and dramatic shifts in
public opinion all appear to follow a physical law: one of the laws of
magnetism. </B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Quentin Michard of
the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris and Jean-Philippe
Bouchaud of the Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay, France, were <B>trying to
explain three social trends: plummeting European birth rates in the late 20th
century, the rapid adoption of cellphones in Europe in the 1990s and the way
people clapping at a concert suddenly stop doing so. In each case, they
theorised, individuals not only have their own preferences, but also tend to
imitate others.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B>"Imitation
is deeply rooted in biology as a survival strategy,"</B> says Bouchaud. <B>In
particular, people frequently copy others who they think know something they
don't.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>To model the
consequences of imitation, the researchers turned to the physics of magnets. An
applied magnetic field will coerce the spins of atoms in a magnetic material to
point in a certain direction. And <B>often an atom's spin direction pushes the
spins of neighbouring atoms to point in a similar direction.</B> And even if an
applied field changes direction slowly, <B>the spins sometimes flip all together
and quite abruptly.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B>The
physicists modified the model such that the atoms represented people and the
direction of the spin indicated a person's behaviour, and used it to predict
shifts in public opinion.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In
the case of cellphones, for example, it is clear that as more people realised
how useful they were, and as their price dropped, more people would buy them.
But how quickly the trend took off depended on how strongly people influenced
each other. <B>The magnetic model predicts that when people have a strong
tendency to imitate others, shifts in behaviour will be faster, and there may
even be discontinuous jumps, with many people adopting cellphones virtually
overnight.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B>More
specifically, the model suggests that the rate of opinion change accelerates in
a mathematically predictable way,</B> with ever greater numbers of people
changing their minds as the population nears the point of maximum change.
Michard and Bouchaud checked this prediction against their model and found that
<B>the trends in birth rates and cellphone usage in European nations conformed
quite accurately to this pattern. The same was true of the rate at which
clapping died away in concerts.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Close this window<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Printed on
Sat May 07 01:01:50 BST 2005<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>