“Biases in the perception of drinking norms among college students” par Baer et al (1991)

“The Majority Illusion in Social Networks” par Lerman et al (2016).
Lié: le paradoxe de l'amitié.

Par l'excellent et accessible à tous, Connected (en, 2009) de Nicholas Christakis et James Fowler's

“Suicide Contagion and the Reporting of Suicide: Recommendations from a National Workshop” par O'Carroll et al (1994), soutenu par le Centre pour le Contrôle et la Prévention des Maladies (CDC).

“Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings” par Towers et al (2015).

Voir également: la campagne Don't Name Them (ne les nommez pas), qui demande aux media de NE PAS diffuser les noms des auteurs de massacres, de leurs manifestes ou le contenu de leurs réseaux sociaux. Cela répand la contagion. A la place, les media devraient parler des victimes, des premiers secours, des héros civils et de la communauté qui fait son deuil.

“Lemmings of Wall Street” par Cass Sunstein est une lecture rapide, non technique. Publiée en Octobre 2008, juste au début du krack.

“Threshold Models of Collective Behavior” par Granovetter (1978) est la première fois, à ma connaissance, où quelqu'un a décrit un modèle de "contagion complexe". (même s'il n'a pas utilisé ce nom en particulier)

“Evidence for complex contagion models of social contagion from observational data” par Sprague & House (2017) montre que les contagions complexes existent bien. (au moins, dans les données de media sociaux qu'ils ont regardé)

Enfin, “Universal behavior in a generalized model of contagion” par Dodds & Watts (2004) propose un modèle qui unifie tout type de contagions: simple et complexes, biologiques and sociales !

arrangé en un anneau de 12 mamelles, plus une au milieu

Cette phrase à la Orwell nous vien d'Irving L. Janis in 1971. Dans son article original, Janis investigue de cas d'effet de groupe, en liste les causes, et — merci — des remèdes possibles.

These two types of social capital — "bonding" and "bridging" — were named by Robert Putnam in his insightful 2000 book, Bowling Alone. His discovery: across almost all empircal measures of social connectiveness, Americans are more alone than ever. Golly.

“The Strength of Weak Ties” by Granovetter (1973) showed that connections across groups helps spread simple contagions (like information), but “Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties” by Centola & Macy (2007) showed that connections across groups may not help complex contagions, and it fact, can hurt their spread!

The idea of the "small world" was popularized by Travers & Milgram's 1969 experiment, which showed that, on average, any two random people in the United States were just six friendships apart — "six degrees of separation"!

The small-world network got more mathematical meat on its bones with “Collective dynamics of small-world networks” by Watts & Strogatz (1998), which proposed an algorithm for creating networks with both low average path length (low degree of separation) and high clustering (friends have lots of mutual friends) — that is, a network that hits the sweet spot!

You can also play with the visual, interactive adaptation of that paper by Bret Victor (2011).

“Small-world brain networks” by Bassett & Bullmore (2006).

“Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem” by Uzzi & Spiro (2005). This paper analyzed the social network of the Broadway scene over time, and discovered that, yup, the network's most creative when it's a "small world" network!

See “Social Physics” by MIT Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland (2014) for a data-based approach to collective intelligence.

Besides the NASA Challenger explosion, the most notorious example of groupthink was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy and his team of advisors thought — for some reason — it would be a good idea to secretly invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. They failed. Actually, worse than failed: it led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the world had ever been to full-scale nuclear war.

Yup, JFK really screwed up on that one.

But, having learnt some hard lessons from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK re-organized his team to avoid groupthink. Among many things, he: 1) actively encouraged people to voice criticism, thus lowering the "contagion threshold" for alternate ideas. And 2) he broke his team up into sub-groups before reconvening, which gave their group a "small world network"-like design! Together, this arrangement allowed for a healthy diversity of opinion, but without being too fractured — a wisdom of crowds.

And so, with the same individuals who decided the Bay of Pigs, but re-arranged collectively to decide on the Cuban Missile Crisis... JFK's team was able to reach a peaceful agreement with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba, and in return, the US would promise not to invade Cuba again. (and also agreed, in secret, to remove the US missiles from Turkey)

And that's the story of how all of humanity almost died. But a small world network saved the day! Sort of.

You can read more about this on Harvard Business Review, or from the original article on groupthink.

Again, from Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler's wonderful book, Connected (2009).

yes, including the ideas in this explorable explanation.

The keyboard shortcuts (1, 2, space, delete) work in all the puzzles, not just Sandbox Mode! Seriously, you can go back to a different chapter, and edit the simulation right there. In fact, that's how I created all these puzzles. Have fun!

To my supporters on Patreon: I'm deeply grateful. Your generosity literally feeds me and pays my rent, and grants me the creative freedom to make these weird math/social-science games. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

Thank you, everyone who playtested Crowds during its many stages of life!

The Prototype:
Maria · Monica Srivastava

The Alpha:
Glen Chiacchieri · Kalli Repzeti · Mali Akmanalp · Toph Tucker

The Beta:
Alex Dytrych · Amit Patel · Cassandra McClure · Catherine Ray · Josh Comeau · Kayle Sawyer · Matthew Conlen · Srini Kadamati · Vanessa Shen · Wick Perry