Human behavior on social media is similar to collective behavior in nature | Hacker News Reader

Human behavior on social media is similar to collective behavior in nature

noemamag.com

119 pointselorant42 comments

one of the mysteries of biology in this century is why/how collective behavior appears to be a fractal from cell cultures to societies and their digital facsimiles

(also, social media are part of nature)

you say cell culture but look at this: https://youtu.be/0Kx4Y9TVMGg very complex patterns simply with particles attracting or repulsing each other.

Think of the dynamics, at each scale they might be different, but similar patterns emerge: rich (or fit) gets richer, minimum distance (or effort) to achieve a goal (e.g. convey information).

And then enters living systems, with the unique quality of being able to continuously absorb external energy in order to intentionally enter a higher energy state in order to satisfy longer term goals outside of the concern of stabilization and free energy minimization. A human can jump, but a rock can't.

And then space, and how the context in term of resources, other biological and geological entities, and the information available, the all condition behaviour.

Doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me. It's clear to me that there is a fundamental grammar underpinning all dynamic systems, and multi-agent systems of sufficient complexity are bound to have fractal similarities resulting from this grammar.

For example, a universal concept which can apply to any system with measurable state variables is "compression", a naturally occurring phenomenon as high-energy systems tend toward lower energy states. Our DNA compresses genetic expression via instruction sets, our brain compresses incoming information, matter itself compresses over time when left to its own devices.

The underlying mechanism for each of these processes varies, but it results from the same basic energy principles. Other such universal concepts include expansion, oscillation, pretty much any movement of a measured value around or between a range of target values. This grammar accounts for much of the behavior of complex dynamic systems, due to energy conservation being a fundamental quality of stable systems.

After long hard thinking, and I am being serious, I've concluded the most primordial common denominator of all there is, is exactly the result from two primordial drives:

1) eating

2) pooping

This is the source and reason for all movement.

We are all just worms wearing a skeleton...

This is the acquisition and expulsion of energy. But in between those steps, living beings also store energy and use it to perform computations which aid in system stability.

Indeed.

Careful, you almost discovered the "Wow!" impulse there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTp8VizqUWY

Wow, wow, wow!

I think it has more to do with survivorship bias.

To be considered as systems, the elements we considered must be linked and display some stability otherwise it would just be chaos and we wouldn’t find it remarkable.

Linked elements means you will see feedback loops. Stability implies some notion of fixed points which means convergence and therefore probably oscillation.

It’s not so much that a fundamental grammar emerges from dynamic systems than we consider things as forming a dynamic system when they fit the grammar we have defined.

I don’t hear about this often. Do you have any sources where I can read more?

me neither, actually

https://www.musingmind.org/podcasts/collective-intelligence-...

It's actually kinda not all that mysterious. Just game theory.

This book Nonzero by Robert write isbn:‎9780679758945 was pretty enlightening for me

> In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9526993-nonzero

So what? Any complex system behaves like that, which makes the analogy banal.

Not quite, I would argue. That may be true of any unregulated system of peers, but not a structured, regulated system.

Such as the hard-earned trials that over time led to what we call civilization.

The potential to massively alter collective human behaviour via tiny variations in social networks is objectively interesting, and important. There's quite a lot at stake there, if you care to look - as the article does a decent job of beginning to address.

The comparison and similarities of human flocking behaviour to other complex systems are not one to one, and are poorly understood. Consider that you might simply be overestimating your understanding.

Thanks for your enlightening comment.

To say that interconnected humans behave like a flock of birds is very flawed in my opinion. Each bird in a flock sees the REAL behaviour of the other birds but this is not necessarily the case with the internet since an entity can heavily influence your perception of the other people by controlling the communication channel. The Internet and social network is more like adding the possibility to create one virtual bird for each real bird and then remotely control the whole flock.

Look at this from the other way around, imagine you could put a few drones influencing the birds.

Books on propaganda from the 1920's explicitly discuss "closing triangles" to artificially influence perception of near-neighbour opinions.

Please can you provide a citation?

I believe I'm remembering either Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) or Propaganda (1928), both by Bernays. (IIRC, the exploitation of local social graphs is in his description of the techniques used to sell US entry into the Great War/WWI)

But there were other authors I consulted in the same timeframe, and Linebarger, in Psychological Warfare (1948) points out that propaganda/public relations men (they were all men, in those days) are less than completely reliable sources when it comes to testimony as to their methods and their efficacy. So you'll probably want to triangulate a bit yourself.

Edit: Propaganda Ch.I,p18 is already promising:

... it must be remembered that these thousands of groups interlace. John Jones, besides being a Rotarian, is member of a church, of a fraternal order, of a political party, of a charitable organization, of a professional association, of a local chamber of commmerce ... This invisible, intertwining structure of groupings and associations is the mechanism by which democracy has organized its group mind and simplified its mass thinking. ... To admit that [this structure] exists, but expect that it shall not be used, is unreasonable.

Amazing description of for what today are called the layers of a multiplex.

Indeed, if it turns out social media platforms allow not only measurement but control over the parameters of the "flock" behaviour, it's only a matter of time before it's possible to engineer sheepdogs.

You can't control what you can't measure, and social media is a very effective measurement tool of crowd behaviour. Whether you can control what you can measure, well that's up to Cambridge Analytica 2.0 to figure out.

I'd wager it's already happened. The general loss of definition since before the pandemic, the events of the past year in particular, especially the sudden burst of clarity around some of the sketchier economic affairs of these past few months, seem to suggest that something bigger's brewing already.

You are not being clear enough to make your post different than a conspiracy theory.

Part of good science is trying to verify the obvious, because sometimes what is "obvious" is not correct, and sometimes it is partially true but differs in ways that are unexpected. We have a whole science crisis around replicating results as it is.

True, science has taught me to always request more science before believing any science

And on your way you forget the details of what you already published.

The research study being quoted: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025764118

In a sense, this article confirms my personal pet theories on the subject. Despite being a little more evolved than birds, by evolutionary standards we are really not that far off. One of the few things that may actually make us sufficiently different is the fact that we can pass knowledge that would take millennia for evolution to sort out.

Naturally, the question becomes what we do about it, implications that social media effectively controls our modern life and that despite some reasons to moderate its influence, slim chance of that appears to be possible.

I take issue with the presumption of the inevitability of social media. Collectively we cannot put the genie back in the bottle, so I don't wish for that. Individually, we can choose how we engage with it, and in doing so, moderate the effects of it somewhat.

Another way to say it is: one must choose to be terminally online, and become part of the mob.

You raise a valid point. I think I both agree and disagree. Shadow profiles do exist and even if you do not directly participate, more social family or social circle member may choose to tag you for one reason or another. I absolutely agree that as individuals we bear responsibility for choosing being part of the mob, but... and I think I used that comparison before here.. have you ever been to a baseball game? The cheering crowd can rouse even a person like me who is there for no reason other than a social obligation. In other words, there is a reason why mob mentality is a common phrase.

You can choose if you are aware of alternatives.

I assume behavior in nature is typically more polite, though.

What makes you think nature is polite? Nature is brutal.

So… animals

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