You’ve stood between two mirrors and seen a reflection that seems—if you were not in the way—to go on forever. The illusion of infinity in those reflections might serve as an example of fashionable dress, manners, and philosophies.
It is only upon your stepping between the mirrors that the repeated image occurs. You start the process of bouncing light, each reflection a seeming perfect imitation of the others. Now consider what you are wearing, how you act, and what you think.
Are you a reflection or initiator?
I ask this after reading about research by Jonathan Touboul called “The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same.” * Touboul writes “Beyond the choice of the best suit to wear this winter, this study may have important implications in understanding synchronization of nerve cells, investment strategies in finance, or emergent dynamics in social science, domains in which delays of communication and the geometry of information accessibility are prominent.” Here’s the gist. At some point after someone starts doing something—the something is irrelevant—imitators arise, first believing they are going against the grain of society at large to become creatively individual, and second falling into a pattern that becomes the new conformity.
Want an example or two? Read the news of the day in early 2019, paying particular attention to the rebirth of socialism in prosperous capitalistic societies. Or simply look through your own past, paying attention to what you looked like and wore in high school.
It’s not easy to be the first person to stand between two mirrors because more than 100 billion humans have preceded you and many of them in the last one or two millennia, probably billions of people, have seen their repeated reflections. But every so often, someone by happenstance does something or appears in some way that becomes the initiator. At different rates, depending on what the reflection reflects, the action or image spreads, and a new conformity arises in conflict with the old conformity.
In a summary of the research online, Brandeis University offers this: “In general, Touboul says, the population of hipsters initially act randomly but then undergo a phase transition into a synchronized state.” Don’t most of us fall into this pattern of eventual synchronization? I know I certainly have when I examine my own history, and I certainly recognize such synchronization in others with whom I have associated. As a college professor for four decades, I had the opportunity to watch many “hip” movements turn into conformities that generated their own anti-conformist trends. Today, the speed of conformity turned anti-conformity turning into conformity appears to be enhanced by social media.
The process should give us all pause. Are we reflections?
*https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hipster-effect-anti-conformists.html Accessed on March 4, 2019. See also https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8001 Also accessed on March 4, 2019.
It is only upon your stepping between the mirrors that the repeated image occurs. You start the process of bouncing light, each reflection a seeming perfect imitation of the others. Now consider what you are wearing, how you act, and what you think.
Are you a reflection or initiator?
I ask this after reading about research by Jonathan Touboul called “The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same.” * Touboul writes “Beyond the choice of the best suit to wear this winter, this study may have important implications in understanding synchronization of nerve cells, investment strategies in finance, or emergent dynamics in social science, domains in which delays of communication and the geometry of information accessibility are prominent.” Here’s the gist. At some point after someone starts doing something—the something is irrelevant—imitators arise, first believing they are going against the grain of society at large to become creatively individual, and second falling into a pattern that becomes the new conformity.
Want an example or two? Read the news of the day in early 2019, paying particular attention to the rebirth of socialism in prosperous capitalistic societies. Or simply look through your own past, paying attention to what you looked like and wore in high school.
It’s not easy to be the first person to stand between two mirrors because more than 100 billion humans have preceded you and many of them in the last one or two millennia, probably billions of people, have seen their repeated reflections. But every so often, someone by happenstance does something or appears in some way that becomes the initiator. At different rates, depending on what the reflection reflects, the action or image spreads, and a new conformity arises in conflict with the old conformity.
In a summary of the research online, Brandeis University offers this: “In general, Touboul says, the population of hipsters initially act randomly but then undergo a phase transition into a synchronized state.” Don’t most of us fall into this pattern of eventual synchronization? I know I certainly have when I examine my own history, and I certainly recognize such synchronization in others with whom I have associated. As a college professor for four decades, I had the opportunity to watch many “hip” movements turn into conformities that generated their own anti-conformist trends. Today, the speed of conformity turned anti-conformity turning into conformity appears to be enhanced by social media.
The process should give us all pause. Are we reflections?
*https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hipster-effect-anti-conformists.html Accessed on March 4, 2019. See also https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8001 Also accessed on March 4, 2019.
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