I found my house through 6 degrees of separation | Hacker News Reader

I found my house through 6 degrees of separation

glissblog.vercel.app

53 pointsliamzebedee25 comments

A relative was recounting a story about the training program for people who have recently been promoted to Managing Director at a bank:

"One of the first classes was about how to leverage our social networks.

The instructor gets up and says 'What is something that you are interested in that you have no idea how to make happen?'

Someone raises their hand and says 'My wife really loves Shakira and it would be amazing if she could perform at my wife's birthday.'

Instructor: 'Anyone able to help with this?'

Hand shoots up: 'My old college roommate works for Shakira's manager. I can put you in touch with him' "

I also remember how some of the older social networks (Friendster and A Small World come to mine) would actually show you the "Kevin Bacon hops" between you and any other member. I always thought it was a cool feature although I can also see how it could be abused for Social Engineering.

So what happened? Did Shakira perform at the birthday party?

This is one of those things that seems interesting/meaningful until you give it more than 10 seconds of thought, and then you realize this is just how life works.

I could whip up an infinite amount of articles explaining how I "Found X through Y degrees of separation", where Y is unexpectedly large. It's trivial to work backwards through your life and reshape everything as a series of coincidences that got you to where you are.

I got my job through 129 degrees of separation! You see, I was born in A, where I went to B school, and met C, who got me interested in D, which led me to discover I had a talent for E, and ... etc etc etc

Get on any plane in the world, it's pretty unlikely that you know any of the passengers. It turns out to be extremely likely, however, that at least one of the passengers knows someone that you also know.

funny story: the only time I ever heard "Excuse me, are you jareklupinski?" was while I was looking for my seat on a plane, from a backer of a kickstarter I did years ago :)

There was a time, when for 3-4 flights over a couple of years, I would always meet someone I knew, so much so that my pre-teen son (in those days) mentioned it. Does not happen any more though, my streak just ran out :)

But I think if I use your approach, I may always find someone traveling who knows someone that I know.

Reminds me of my grandparents while they were alive. No matter where we went with them (often on family vacations all over the US and Canada) they would find someone that they either knew or someone with whom they shared a mutual acquaintance.

Haha congratulations! You got it.

> It's trivial to work backwards through your life and reshape everything as a series of coincidences that got you to where you are.

What if you worked forwards based on this idea of coincidence engineering?

Well, now you've got Foundation.

There’s even a word for that: serendipity.

Yes exactly, I don't really even see this as an application of the 'n degrees of separation' phrase/principle. Why did OP stop at Felix: who suggested they take the class, or whatever, you can keep going back as you say, the six here is completely arbitrary.

Someone doing something for you whom you met not at birth but after some stuff happened isn't 6 degrees of separation, it's just life.

The challenge is that you might only need 6 hops to find that person you’re looking for (on average).

Yes but that would be about finding a Pete when you only know Felix - you knew every link in the chain already, including Pete.

I'm not saying don't be glad you met Felix because it led to your house, just that I don't think it's a case of 6DoS.

It seems we disagree on 6dos. I think it's a useful concept to anchor on, since you can predict the structure of your domain (social networks, renting) based on the size of the network, and then optimize your routing so you get to a certain node (a nice house to live) quickly. Or even in my case - realising there is a path in the first place.

I hope this translates more clearly into engineering terms. The original audience of this post was non-technical.

Hey let me tell you how I found one of my jobs!

I just moved to a new room and was speaking spanish on the phone. My new neighbor stopped me and asked if I could help their son to study Spanish. I accepted to do it for free. Since I didn't take a payment, the wife invited me for dinner as payment. During dinner I met the husband, who just happens to be a directive for a local company. After talking, it turns out that they were looking for a programmer. I was also looking for a new job.

Of course this is a pointless anecdote. Rather than individual anecdotes, I prefer to look for a general framework, such as the luck surface area [1].

[1] https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/surface-area-of-luck

It also shows how social capital as a whole plays a role, above and beyond the connections.

You did the wife a favour and the husband did you a favour by putting forward your CV for interview.

I've met a bunch of billionaires in my life through work, but doing so hasn't changed my life one iota. On the other hand, giving up my (unused) dessert spoon on my first date to my (now) partner on our first date after she dropped hers has stuck in her mind and she claims it was one of the small things that contributed in to me getting a second date.

This is not really the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. He knew Pete already, so it's a direct referral, how he got to know him is not really interesting. I mean for him it definitely is, but I'm not sure what to get out of this :)

I read a book years ago called "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives" that talked a lot about this. A lot of opportunities in our lives come from two or three levels out in our social circle. IIRC, the book specifically mentions friends of friends as one of the most common ways to find jobs.

My favorite thing they talked about was how behaviors travel through social circles. A person you may not even know quitting smoking or losing weight could be the catalyst for you doing the same thing.

Thank you for the linkout, I'll put it on my reading list.

Huh, after he concluded the story, it got a bit rambling and pop-philosophical. Featuring that Steve Jobs quote that might as well be printed on wood and be sold as kitsch decoration...

Wahey, it's the season to be nice and jolly!

Haha, well you're right. The point of writing is to think. I never said it was going to be a scientific theory - and really, life is too complex a landscape to build a falsifiable theory anyways. We can still discuss anecdotes though.

Everyone in the whole world is separated by a limited number. The notion that everyone is separated by six degrees [0] is apparently considered an urban myth, but social networks seemed to have an average of six jumps to reach everyone else (see link). Curious how it holds up nowadays.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

I had an odd experience where I found my last apartment 5 months after receiving a (wrong number) call from the owner. It was a surreal coincidence.

We actually aren't dealing with whole population of the planet, or even a country. Show the graphs in locations you attempt to connect to are much much denser.

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