network 'hubs' v. 'hives'

[William E Craven]

Phil,
That makes sense, although I don't know if it necessarily needs to be a
negative image.  There's a strong desire to create images which support
one's own self-image or sense of place, so if one of the "aliens" appears
to be an enemy of your enemy you would tend to assign that alien a
positive image.

While I'll buy into the fear of allowing unknowns I'm not sure I buy into
the laziness argument, though.  Before the Wright brothers the
conventional wisdom was that it was impossible for heavier-than-air
flight was impossible, even among many who understood the potential of
internal combustion engines for producing great amounts of thrust.  It
was only those who understood the concept of aerodynamic lift as well as
the potential of engines who realized that such flight was possible.  I
don't think a failure to understand aerodynamics reflected laziness,
since you needed quite a bit of education before you touched on it, but
there was a need for individuals to have an opinion on the feasibility of
such flight.  The flawed logical argument that since flight had never
happened before it was therefore impossible was one which minds of all
education levels could grasp.

There's also the very real potential that this collective ignorance will
be manipulated.  How many people in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries
willingly contributed funds to missionaries based on the oratory of a
single missionary who spoke glowingly of his church's efforts and of the
dire conditions his missionaries were overcoming?  And in retrospect how
many of those orations were remotely accurate?  Modern political
discourse is another area where the manipulation of ignorance - of the
images and stereotypes which people have developed - has largely
displaced reasoned discussion.  I simply don't buy into the idea that
these ignorances grew out of laziness: there's simply too much to absorb
so these images or stereotypes must be developed of the "aliens" simply
to preserve some sense in the individual of how the world is ordered.
Bill

On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 17:50:27 -0400 "Phil Henshaw" <sy at synapse9.com>
writes:
Bill,
Do you think there's anything to my idea that part of the reason for the
negative images assigned to 'aliens'  from the disconnected parts of the
larger world, about whom we know almost nothing, is that it's just an
easier way to cover up the natural edges where the quality of information
falls?   As we look off into the information 'darkness' surrounding any
dense information space, where all its connections stop, we get nervous
and need to make up things.   Projecting from our imagination a negative
mirror images of ourselves to fill out the picture could be about the
easiest way to fake the gaps and create an artificial whole image of the
world.    That would suggest that fear of allowing unknowns and laziness
is what does it...
 



On 9/6/07, wecraven at juno.com <wecraven at juno.com> wrote:
Phil, what you describe here is exactly what Lippman describes in his
book.  Lippman notes that most people in the early 20th century literally
have very small circles of acquaintances, and then have even smaller
circles of confidantes, and that within each of these hives there's a
certain consistency of opinion (there are also certain individuals who
become recognized arbiters of opinions for the groups).  A group of
workingmen of Irish descent might have little ral contact with
shopkeepers, businessmen, and bankers of English, German and Scandinavian
descent, and this separation could be compounded if the workmen were
Catholic while the business owners were Protestant.  Neither group could
have a realistic idea of what "Arabia" or "China" was like, and if by
chance that some member of the group had actually been to one of those
places the group's opinions would be modified somewhat to incorporate the
biases of the individual.

In the towns and smaller cities of his time there were circles of elites,
centered on its wealthiest members, who because they have greater access
to information from other parts of the world (through travel, cables,
mails, telephones, etc.) largely become the arbiters of each town's world
view .  The opinions from these inner circles spread outward through the
"gregarious members" who straddled multiple circles.  But, fundamentally,
those elites themselves are limited in what they can know as well, since
few if any of them have ever been to Arabia or China, and what news they
have of these places, like with the workingmen, is filtered through the
biases of those who are reporting it.

If by chance a Chinaman were to pass through town the people would tend
to only see their preset stereotypes in the man unless something dramatic
occurred which forced them to re-evaluate their stereotypes.  Lippman
indicates that it is *necessary* for stereotypes to be formed in order to
put a frame on any news or information which comes in.  Thus, the
visiting Chinaman - before he even arrives - cannot be exactly like the
people of the town he visits.  He must be crafty, or shifty, or
industrious, or lazy, or a thief, or a threat to young women's morals,
etc.  When he arrives the people look for those traits which reaffirm
their stereotypes and ignore those which are contrary.

Lippman discusses how these barriers can be breached to form a common
will, primarily in the context of how propoganda was used to form public
opinion during WWI, but notes the difficulties in achieving this and
sustaining it.  The Allies essentially stopped being allies on 11/11/18
and reverted to squabbling partisans pursuing their own interests, and
just as quickly the people in each of the Allied nations ceased thinking
in terms of how their actions affected the national goal of fighting the
Central Powers and reverted to their parochial interest.

Bill

On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:49:54 -0400 "phil henshaw" <pfh at synapse9.com>
writes:
> Bill,
> Thanks, I missed your reply.   I tried to see if there was a cheap copy
> of "Public Opinion" on Amazon, but for once they didn't have it!  My
> question is about how the property of especially high connectedness
also
> produces unusual isolation, when you look at the neighborhoods  dense
> inter-connection from the bottom up rather than top down.   A small
> group of bloggers will blog almost exclusively to themselves, you  can
> see it in the network maps.   Their conversation also comes to seem
like
> the whole world to them.   Because their links are only 'almost' all
to
> themselves, the rest of the network is potentially informed  (through
> their occasional gregarious members) about what the little cell  that
> thinks it's the world is talking about.  The little cell,
unfortunately
> though, learns about the rest of the world in inverse proportion!  
>
>
> One of the structural questions about the topology of the networks
that
> natural systems tend to produce is how this 'tiny world' effects  the
> view of an uninformed observer who finds themselves, say, born in  one.

> My impression is that every 'tiny world' is a largely  self-sufficient
> intense hive of activity, and that when you get to the edge of it,
> instead of seeing unknown worlds beyond, you see nothing at all,  not
> even an absence of links.   The absence of links between the  internal
> traffic of these 'tiny worlds' and the greater network is visible  only
> from the larger network's hubs, though their view will have little
depth
> and no language for the larger system to use for talking to the  'tiny
> worlds' they connect together.
>
> What I'm getting to is that there seems to be much more than a
> subjective 'stereotyping' going on in how we form our stereotyped
> images.   A profound structural 'tiny world bias' seems inherent in
how
> ural systems develop network connections.   Hoping not to overload
> the idea, but there's one more thing.   In the information flows of
any
> 'tiny world' network hive there will be a sharp fall-off of
information

> quality about the rest of the world.   That boundary is where  people
> need to start filling their own guesses, building a fantasy world  of
> 'image patches' to make their own sense of things complete.  Often  the
> lazy shortcut for doing that is simply filling in with reverse
> self-images for whatever is 'alien' to the dense information space  of
> their own hive.
>
> Does that sound possible?
>
> Phil
>
> >
> > Phil, it sounds from the follow-on conversation so far like
> > you're mainly interested in *quantifying* the relationships
> > between "hives" and "hubs", which is well outside my purview,
> > but if you're interested in a discussion of *why* different
> > people fail to effectively communicate, and how that relates
> > to the circle of people with which they regularly interact,
> > then I'd strongly recommend Walter Lippman's "Public
> > Opinion", and in particular the first three sections of the
> > book.  Despite being written when Harding was president,
> > Lippman's observations about how the limited ability of an
> > individual to directly interface/interact with all the
> > world's information creates a need for stereotypes through
> > which that information is filtered, and that once that
> > information is filtered you effectively have different
> > preceptions of reality which impact the ability to
> > communicate, still make sense in the internet age.  He also
> > has a good discussion of why individuals largely reject
> > information which doesn't fit into their existing stereotypes.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

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[Phil Henshaw-2]

Bill,
 

That makes sense, although I don't know if it necessarily needs to be a
negative image.  There's a strong desire to create images which support
one's own self-image or sense of place, so if one of the "aliens"
appears to be an enemy of your enemy you would tend to assign that alien
a positive image.
[PH] Wondering about 'filling in' negative mirror images of yourself to
explain the world beyond beyond your well supported local network of
information was prompted by how often that is done by leaders to exploit
fears... you know, how the 'aliens' are all 'two-bit thugs', etc.   When
your crowd knows nothing at all about the other crowd anyone can get
away with saying anything negative, but not the reverse...  There's lots
of layers to that, all of which come back to the boundary between your
good and disconnected information.  
 
 
While I'll buy into the fear of allowing unknowns I'm not sure I buy
into the laziness argument, though.  Before the Wright brothers the
conventional wisdom was that it was impossible for heavier-than-air
flight was impossible, even among many who understood the potential of
internal combustion engines for producing great amounts of thrust.  It
was only those who understood the concept of aerodynamic lift as well as
the potential of engines who realized that such flight was possible.  I
don't think a failure to understand aerodynamics reflected laziness,
since you needed quite a bit of education before you touched on it, but
there was a need for individuals to have an opinion on the feasibility
of such flight.  The flawed logical argument that since flight had never
happened before it was therefore impossible was one which minds of all
education levels could grasp.
[PH] sure.  In this case the several opinions could represent membership
in several different communities of thinking, with fringes of the
unknown in different places and of different forms.   Different affinity
groups maintain entirely different conversations in the same physical
space, like various passionate political persuasions, each with
different information, different information perimeters, and styles of
filling in the gaps at the fringe with made-up stuff of convenience...
It's a great model because it seems to work.   The people that become
suspect, even more than the ones who fill in the gaps at the fringe of
their understanding with hateful images of others, are the one's who
don't fill in the gaps, allowing the unknown to remain that way until
they find something that's really there!    You just can't trust what
way those folks will take sides!!
 
 
There's also the very real potential that this collective ignorance will
be manipulated.  How many people in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries
willingly contributed funds to missionaries based on the oratory of a
single missionary who spoke glowingly of his church's efforts and of the
dire conditions his missionaries were overcoming?  And in retrospect how
many of those orations were remotely accurate?  Modern political
discourse is another area where the manipulation of ignorance - of the
images and stereotypes which people have developed - has largely
displaced reasoned discussion.  I simply don't buy into the idea that
these ignorances grew out of laziness: there's simply too much to absorb
so these images or stereotypes must be developed of the "aliens" simply
to preserve some sense in the individual of how the world is ordered.

[PH] for clarity, what I'm imagining for all these sketches is a general
scale free network model of information flows, and the view from within
one hive of its activity on some naturally defined subject (home,
gardening, the upcoming talk, the nation) , exposing the observer to a
dense cross referencing of information that has an edge where the
information looses it's dense cross referencing, becomes scattered, and
falls off, trying to be realistic about what I think we all experience.
 
Well, my suggestion of 'laziness' was mainly to question why we would
feel compelled to fill in the gaps with anything other than a fuzzy
image of several things that might fit our actual information.   That
essentially leaves the edges of what we know as they are, and us ready
to do the work of connecting in new data.    If the only thing
validating the seamless patches you have placed around the limits of
your information is some emotion charged mish mash placed there by
someone you hardly know, I think it also shows laziness in maintaining
the integrity of your own knowledge.   If someone paints bright images
of their own around the limits of your information, and you maintain
them, and let them hide the information gaps they cover up from you,
that sure seems like a lazy person's way of doing things.   You do get
to navigate the world with all your gaps in information filled in,...and
you also get to run into surprising things unexpectedly as a consequence
 
I would certainly agree that the fringe of one's own information net is
curiously vulnerable to having nonsense planted in it by others, and not
only because we are sometimes lazy in vetting it.   That was part of
your suggestion I think.    For another example take advertising, and
the value of creating pure image values for products that have no
content in the product whatever, and no function in life...  That that
can sell stuff like crazy is just an amazing trick it seems to me!
:-))
 
Phil
 
Bill
 
On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 17:50:27 -0400 "Phil Henshaw" <sy at synapse9.com>
writes:

Bill,
Do you think there's anything to my idea that part of the reason for the
negative images assigned to 'aliens'  from the disconnected parts of the
larger world, about whom we know almost nothing, is that it's just an
easier way to cover up the natural edges where the quality of
information falls?   As we look off into the information 'darkness'
surrounding any dense information space, where all its connections stop,
we get nervous and need to make up things.   Projecting from our
imagination a negative mirror images of ourselves to fill out the
picture could be about the easiest way to fake the gaps and create an
artificial whole image of the world.    That would suggest that fear of
allowing unknowns and laziness is what does it...
 


On 9/6/07, wecraven at juno.com <wecraven at juno.com> wrote:

Phil, what you describe here is exactly what Lippman describes in his
book.  Lippman notes that most people in the early 20th century
literally have very small circles of acquaintances, and then have even
smaller circles of confidantes, and that within each of these hives
there's a certain consistency of opinion (there are also certain
individuals who become recognized arbiters of opinions for the groups).
A group of workingmen of Irish descent might have little ral contact
with shopkeepers, businessmen, and bankers of English, German and
Scandinavian descent, and this separation could be compounded if the
workmen were Catholic while the business owners were Protestant.
Neither group could have a realistic idea of what "Arabia" or "China"
was like, and if by chance that some member of the group had actually
been to one of those places the group's opinions would be modified
somewhat to incorporate the biases of the individual.
 
In the towns and smaller cities of his time there were circles of
elites, centered on its wealthiest members, who because they have
greater access to information from other parts of the world (through
travel, cables, mails, telephones, etc.) largely become the arbiters of
each town's world view .  The opinions from these inner circles spread
outward through the "gregarious members" who straddled multiple circles.
But, fundamentally, those elites themselves are limited in what they can
know as well, since few if any of them have ever been to Arabia or
China, and what news they have of these places, like with the
workingmen, is filtered through the biases of those who are reporting
it.
 
If by chance a Chinaman were to pass through town the people would tend
to only see their preset stereotypes in the man unless something
dramatic occurred which forced them to re-evaluate their stereotypes.
Lippman indicates that it is *necessary* for stereotypes to be formed in
order to put a frame on any news or information which comes in.  Thus,
the visiting Chinaman - before he even arrives - cannot be exactly like
the people of the town he visits.  He must be crafty, or shifty, or
industrious, or lazy, or a thief, or a threat to young women's morals,
etc.  When he arrives the people look for those traits which reaffirm
their stereotypes and ignore those which are contrary.
 
Lippman discusses how these barriers can be breached to form a common
will, primarily in the context of how propoganda was used to form public
opinion during WWI, but notes the difficulties in achieving this and
sustaining it.  The Allies essentially stopped being allies on 11/11/18
and reverted to squabbling partisans pursuing their own interests, and
just as quickly the people in each of the Allied nations ceased thinking
in terms of how their actions affected the national goal of fighting the
Central Powers and reverted to their parochial interest.
 
Bill
 
On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:49:54 -0400 "phil henshaw" <pfh at synapse9.com>
writes:
> Bill,
> Thanks, I missed your reply.   I tried to see if there was a cheap
copy
> of "Public Opinion" on Amazon, but for once they didn't have it!  My
> question is about how the property of especially high connectedness
also
> produces unusual isolation, when you look at the neighborhoods  dense
> inter-connection from the bottom up rather than top down.   A small
> group of bloggers will blog almost exclusively to themselves, you  can

> see it in the network maps.   Their conversation also comes to seem
like
> the whole world to them.   Because their links are only 'almost' all
to
> themselves, the rest of the network is potentially informed  (through
> their occasional gregarious members) about what the little cell  that
> thinks it's the world is talking about.  The little cell,
unfortunately
> though, learns about the rest of the world in inverse proportion!  
>
>
> One of the structural questions about the topology of the networks
that
> natural systems tend to produce is how this 'tiny world' effects  the
> view of an uninformed observer who finds themselves, say, born in
one.
> My impression is that every 'tiny world' is a largely  self-sufficient
> intense hive of activity, and that when you get to the edge of it,
> instead of seeing unknown worlds beyond, you see nothing at all,  not
> even an absence of links.   The absence of links between the  internal
> traffic of these 'tiny worlds' and the greater network is visible
only
> from the larger network's hubs, though their view will have little
depth
> and no language for the larger system to use for talking to the  'tiny
> worlds' they connect together.
>
> What I'm getting to is that there seems to be much more than a
> subjective 'stereotyping' going on in how we form our stereotyped
> images.   A profound structural 'tiny world bias' seems inherent in
how
> ural systems develop network connections.   Hoping not to overload
> the idea, but there's one more thing.   In the information flows of
any
> 'tiny world' network hive there will be a sharp fall-off of
information
> quality about the rest of the world.   That boundary is where  people
> need to start filling their own guesses, building a fantasy world  of
> 'image patches' to make their own sense of things complete.  Often
the
> lazy shortcut for doing that is simply filling in with reverse
> self-images for whatever is 'alien' to the dense information space  of

> their own hive.
>
> Does that sound possible?
>
> Phil
>
> >
> > Phil, it sounds from the follow-on conversation so far like
> > you're mainly interested in *quantifying* the relationships
> > between "hives" and "hubs", which is well outside my purview,
> > but if you're interested in a discussion of *why* different
> > people fail to effectively communicate, and how that relates
> > to the circle of people with which they regularly interact,
> > then I'd strongly recommend Walter Lippman's "Public
> > Opinion", and in particular the first three sections of the
> > book.  Despite being written when Harding was president,
> > Lippman's observations about how the limited ability of an
> > individual to directly interface/interact with all the
> > world's information creates a need for stereotypes through
> > which that information is filtered, and that once that
> > information is filtered you effectively have different
> > preceptions of reality which impact the ability to
> > communicate, still make sense in the internet age.  He also
> > has a good discussion of why individuals largely reject
> > information which doesn't fit into their existing stereotypes.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

 


 

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