The Tipping Point

I came across an interesting study this week on Tipping Points and the Spread of Ideas.  Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10% of the population believe something totally (e.g. an unshakable belief), their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.

Here is an article about the study.

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.” 

As an example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process, according to Szymanski. “In those countries, dictators who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few weeks.”

A big reason for the spread of beliefs is the fact that most people are conformists.  They do not want to stand out from the crowd.

“In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models,” said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models “talked” to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener’s belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.

“As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change,” Sreenivasan said. “People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn’t change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10.”

I think this is interesting research especially as it related to what is going on in the country today.  The so-called Tea Party movement is a perfect example.  This movement traces its origins from a rant by news correspondent Rick Santelli on CNBC in February, 2009.

The Washington elite seem to view the Tea Party as a distasteful fringe group.  However, the views of that group clearly influenced the 2010 vote.  It was a vote of the People, not the Tea Party alone, that changed the composition of Congress.  That vote, in turn, has had major ramifications in the Capitol.  That influence is so great that it appears right now that the debt ceiling deal that has been agreed to by both a Democratic President and Democratic Majority in the Senate will include no tax increases,  a promise of some cuts in entitlements and a potential vote of a Balance Budget Amendment.

This all would have been considered a pipe dream a year ago.  We may be in the midst of a tipping point.  Based on the RPI research this may be more a function right now of the passion of the Tea Party than their sheer numbers.  This was clearly evident in that many of the members of the Tea Party caucus on the Hill were simply not going to settle for another "kick the can down the road" Washington solution.  They were unshakable.  We have not seen that same total belief for the defenders of entitlement and government spending.

On the other hand, we see a similar trend in the issue of gay marriage.  The proponents have gained momentum compared to several years ago.  Traditional marriage advocates had the upper hand a few years ago and were successful in defining marriage as between one man and one woman in a number of states.  It will take renewed passion on the part of those opposing gay marriage to defend against this potential tipping point toward gay marriage.

What beliefs do you hold that are unshakable?  Your passion could be contagious.

UPDATE 8/2/11:  Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator has similar thoughts in American Tipping Point.  He provides an excellent chronology of the slow spread of conservatism from the New Deal to today.

Thanks to the Tea Party movement, Conservatism is on the verge of a major victory that dwarfs the technical and actual realities of whatever the details of the resulting deficit deal passed last night. Yes, there is a long, long way to go. But the idea that America doesn't, in fact, have to be governed for eternity as a debtor nation with a mammoth, out-of-control, ever-expanding government is winning the day. It is tipping the balance with increasing decisiveness against an idea that has become so much a part of conventional wisdom that even some conservatives, startlingly including, inexplicably, the Wall Street Journal, have displayed the wobblies at the thought of confronting the Leviathan. 

He spends time setting the background on "tipping points" with reference to Malcom Gladwell's excellent book which used examples of the resurgence of Hush Puppy shoes in the mid-1990's and Paul Revere's famous ride to show how the tipping point is reached.

America -- and the eternally Big Government, tax and spend ideas of the American Left -- will never be seen the same way again. Which is precisely why the Left is writhing and foaming as this goes to Internet print. 

The Tea Party is the new Hush Puppy. They are, to use a Gladwell example, Paul Revere. The message has been delivered with maximum impact. The revolution is here.

A new American Tipping Point has arrived.