@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I see, then I don't think I understand the example: don't they interact through weight, friction, etc., once they are connected by the string?
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh they do, but the thing that’s at issue is why they are suddenly all connected. What ‘caused’ that?
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I looked for videos of this experiment to try and understand it better, but I don't seem to have found one.
I would think that the idea would be that what causes that is just the ensemble of causal relations between the buttons: weight, friction, etc with just the right values to make that happen. But my grasp of the case is not great, so I'm not sure.
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh it’s just a thought experiment, Dimitri. You could replace it with anything that can be described with a network: say a bunch of new people move into a neighbourhood, they bump into each other randomly, two at a time, and become acquainted. When they meet an acquaintance, they pass on new information about the neighbourhood. At some point, when enough of them have become acquainted (ie formed pairwise ties) info will spread to everyone
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh ah, the description on the book seemed to suggest it was an actual experiment/demonstration, since it talks about connecting physical elements to each other and then mentions, implying a partial contrast, results from a simulation of the scenario.
But in the neighbourhood case, what is the puzzle? Information spreads by people meeting each other, right?
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh
yes, but the contrast is between the case where information spreads to everyone. (network is connected) and where it does not (network is not connected).
This is where the phase transition as a function of number of pairwise links comes in…
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh
and it works with the social network just like with the button network, because it’s a mathematical constraint …..
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh urgh, this is annoying, for some reason I didn't see those earlier posts!
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh right, I don't think the mainstream view (if it really is so) denies the pattern, it just denies that it is anything over and above the complex causal relations that constitute it in any specific case. The pattern is just a type that can be realised by different token causal systems that have the relevant features necessary for being tokens of the type. That doesn't though make causal statements involving the type false.
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh so a mathematical 'constraint' is just a way of generalising over different causal systems organised in such a way that they instantiate certain causal structures well captured/approximated by the mathematical formalism at a certain level of abstraction and idealisation.
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh Dimitri, I’m still not sure what you are taking the causal relations in the system itself. (buttons, neighbourhood network) to be exactly?
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh In the neighbourhood case it would be people talking to each other, I would think. I don't quite get the button example, so wouldn't know other than what I mentioned before.
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh but that doesn’t explain the difference between the case when connectivity is such that everyone is reached and the case where it isn’t, no? They are talking to each other in either case.
It feels more to me like the question of whether or not the threshold of ln N (randomly placed) pairwise connections is exceeded or not is an orthogonal issue?
