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--></style><title>Re: [Paleopsych] fads and
atoms</title></head><body>
<div>What about incorrectly folded prions?</div>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="-1"
color="#000000">The following article hits the motherlode when it
comes to our past discussions of Ur patterns, iteration, and
fracticality. 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><br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="-1"
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="-1"
color="#000000">Here's how a pattern in the molecules of magnets
repeats itself in the mass moodswings of human beings.
Howard</font><br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="-1"
color="#000000">etrieved May 6, 2005, from the World Wide Web
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624984.200 HOME |NEWS
|EXPLORE BY SUBJECT |LAST WORD |SUBSCRIBE |SEARCH |ARCHIVE |RSS |JOBS
Click to PrintOne law rules dedicated followers of fashion 06 May
2005 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Mark
Buchanan FADS,<b> fashions and dramatic shifts in public opinion
all appear to follow a physical law: one of the laws of magnetism.</b>
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> <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> 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> <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> 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> <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> Close this
window Printed on Sat May 07 01:01:50 BST 2005 </font><br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#000000">----------<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.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"
color="#000000">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</font><br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
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paleopsych@paleopsych.org<br>
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<div><br>
-------------------------------------<br>
Prof. Hannes Eisler<br>
Department of Psychology<br>
Stockholm University<br>
S-106 91 Stockholm<br>
Sweden<br>
<br>
e-mail: he@psychology.su.se<br>
fax : +46-8-15 93 42<br>
phone : +46-8-163967 (university)<br>
+46-8-6409982
(home)<br>
internet: http://www.psychology.su.se/staff/he</div>
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