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How to Break the Habit of Provincial Thinking
If I'm looking to find out what is the case with the war and whether the war is legitimate, I'm probably not going to be fully satisfied with the New York Times or theWashington Post or Fox News or CNN.
I'm a citizen and I want to know what my government is doing because my government is supposed to represent me, so I look to the news to find out what they’re doing and to form a judgment on whether I think that is right or whether I think that is wrong.
If I think it’s wrong I'm going to try to express my opinion. I'm going to try to communicate that, not just through my vote, but maybe through various forms of political organization or expression. So if I'm looking to find out what is the case with the war and whether the war is legitimate, I'm probably not going to be fully satisfied with the New York Times or the Washington Post or Fox News or CNN. I'm going to want to get on various sites that allow me to see how the same events are covered in other countries, how the political values of the war are being openly debated and I'm going to move from site to site to see what happens to my thinking as I move through those sites.
I'm a professor of comparative literature among other things, so I'm able to read in a couple of other languages and I understand that not everyone is, not everyone can, although it is quite stunning how many people do read Spanish in the United States, but moving between languages is also extremely helpful.
Events that get covered in the US one way are not very important elsewhere or are given a completely different slant and one needs to have a kind of comparative way of thinking in order to arrive at a judgment that is not completely provincial, that doesn’t end up ratifying one’s own national perspective and hence, one’s own national agendas.
In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think's studio.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
14 January, 2021
Credit: Getty Images
Sponsored by Northwell Health
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
<p>One of the most devastating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been unpredictability. The nation's health systems—especially those in hard-hit areas like New York City—have had to adapt to sudden surges of COVID-19 cases, all while dealing with limited resources, existing patients, and a novel virus that's still not fully understood.</p><p>But what if health systems were able to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks before they occur? Northwell Health, the largest health care system in New York state, recently deployed a predictive tool that does just that.</p><p>Northwell Health's <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/northwell-website-patterns-predict-covid-19-cases" target="_blank">surveillance dashboard</a> is able to predict COVID-19 hospitalizations by using insights from machine learning. In March, Northwell Health's Customer Insights Group developed an algorithm that's been mining data from online traffic to the Northwell.edu website, which has received more than 20 million hits since March.<strong></strong></p><p>The algorithm collects data through 15 different indicators, each of which reflects the online behavior of the website's visitors. For example, the tool analyzes metrics such as the length of time users spend on certain pages, searches for emergency department wait times, and specific symptoms users search for. Combined, this information translates into something like the "public mood" of the website on any given day.</p>
<blockquote>Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.</blockquote>
<p>To understand how this mood relates to future COVID-19 cases, Northwell Health began comparing its data with a timeline of COVID-19 hospitalizations across 23 hospitals and nearly 800 outpatient facilities and in the metro New York area. This enabled the Customer Insights Group to see patterns of online activity that precede future increases or decreases in hospitalizations.</p><p>Since Northwell Health began using the predictive tool in September, it's predicted COVID-19 hospitalizations with an accuracy of about 80 percent.</p><p>"This is really the first tool that I've been exposed to that gives me a sort of guestimate of what two weeks from now may look like," said Dr. <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/find-care/find-a-doctor/emergency-medicine/dr-eric-scott-cruzen-md-mba-11346068" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eric Cruzen, </a>chief medical informatics officer of Northwell's emergency medicine services and chair of the emergency department at Lenox Health Greenwich Village in Manhattan.</p><p>"Even if the data can provide an idea of whether to expect an increase, decrease, or stasis, that's valuable. Because every day we're working to estimate what tomorrow's going to bring. Any tool that's going to shed light on that is a good tool in my book."</p>
The value of forecasting
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTA0Njk2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzM2NDQzOH0.rid9regiDaKczCCKBsu7wrHkNQ64Vz_XcOEZIzAhzgM/img.jpg?width=980" id="2bb93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="31345afbdf2bd408fd3e9f31520c445a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1546" data-height="1056" />Northwell emergency departments use the dashboard to monitor in real time.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>
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Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
03 May, 2020
Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Surprising Science
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
<p>Alien hunting is a hopeful activity and one reason behind our space programs that the public generally supports. Looking for other life is a strong incentive to be venturing out into space, despite having found none so far. A top British space scientist,<strong> Professor Monica Grady,</strong> gave all cosmic explorers a big dose of such hope in a recent speech. She is certain there's some form of life on Jupiter's moon, <strong>Europa</strong>.</p><p>This life would not look human, but more like an "octopus," and is likely residing in the cold waters under the moon's sheets of ice. </p><p>Grady, a Professor of Planetary and Space Science and Chancellor at Liverpool Hope University, thinks there's a great likelihood of undiscovered life somewhere in our galaxy.</p><p>She also supposes that the deeper caves and cavernous spaces of Mars could be harboring some subterranean creatures, likely bacteria, there to escape the solar radiation. They could be getting water from the ice buried deep down. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it's <strong>almost a racing certainty </strong>that there's life beneath the ice on Europa," <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-02-certainty-life-europa-mars-uk.html" target="_blank">she said</a> in a February address.</p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">She thinks these life forms on Europa, </span><span style="background-color: initial;">390 million miles from Earth, could be higher in sophistication than the Martian bacteria, possibly having "the intelligence of an octopus."</span><br></p><p>Where would the creatures live on this moon of Jupiter? Somewhere below the very thick layer of ice, which goes 15 miles deep in some places. It's possible there is liquid water beneath all that ice, keeping whatever lives inside protected against radiation and the impact of asteroids and similar smashing bodies.</p><p><span></span><span style="background-color: initial;">The likelihood of life on Europa is bolstered by </span><span style="background-color: initial;">the possible <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.P23D1743G/abstract" target="_blank">hydrothermal vents</a> on its ocean floor. Such vents are cradles of life on Earth.</span></p><p>Grady thinks that our solar system doesn't have to be particularly special and that statistically speaking, as we explore other stars and galaxies, we should be able to find conditions for life. "I think it's highly likely there will be life elsewhere—and I think it's highly likely they'll be made of the same elements," <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-02-certainty-life-europa-mars-uk.html" target="_blank">stated</a> the professor.</p>
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div><p>Grady did not want to guess whether we would contact extraterrestrials any time soon, citing the fact that distances between us and likely aliens might be gigantic. </p><p>On the other hand, she added, if you look at a grain of sand, you "can see that most of it is made up of silicates, but it's also got little patches of carbon in it—and that carbon is extra-terrestrial, because it also contains nitrogen and hydrogen, which is not a terrestrial signature."</p><p>This tiny sample, says Grady, shows it was hit by meteorites, asteroids, and interstellar dust, pointing out "It's giving us an idea of how complex the record of extra-terrestrial material really is."</p>
<p>As for Europa, it has certainly figured in conversations about alien life previously. As <a href="https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/why-europa/" target="_blank">NASA explains</a>, scientists call Europa an "ocean world" due to decades of observations that predict an ocean under its sheets of ice. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">In 2019, water vapor was confirmed there by NASA for the first time. While it might just have the right conditions for life, </span><span style="background-color: initial;">does this moon have little octopus E.T.s swimming about? Future studies will tell. </span></p>
Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
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The scent of sickness: 5 questions answered about using dogs – and mice and ferrets – to detect disease
Could medical detection animals smell coronavirus?
14 January, 2021
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Coronavirus
As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, scientists are analyzing new ways to track it.
<p> One promising approach is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03149-9" target="_blank">training dogs to detect people who are infected</a> by smelling samples of human urine or sweat. Research scientist Glen Golden, who has trained dogs and ferrets to detect avian flu in birds, explains why certain animals are well suited to sniff out sickness.</p><h2>1. Which species have a nose for disease?</h2><p>Some animals have highly developed senses of smell. They include rodents; dogs and their wild relatives, like wolves and coyotes; and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-mustelids-2058294" target="_blank">mustelids</a> – carnivorous mammals such as weasels, otters and ferrets. These species' brains have three or more times more functional olfactory receptor neurons – nerve cells that respond to odors – than species with less keen smelling abilities, including humans and other primates. </p><p>These neurons are responsible for detecting and identifying volatile olfactory compounds that send meaningful signals, like smoke from a fire or the aroma of fresh meat. A substance is volatile if it changes readily from liquid to gas at low temperatures, like the acetone that gives nail polish remover its fruity smell. Once it vaporizes, it can spread rapidly through the air.</p><p>When one of these animals detects a meaningful odor, the chemical signal is translated into messages and transported throughout its brain. The messages go simultaneously to the olfactory cortex, which is responsible for identifying, localizing and remembering odor, and to other brain regions responsible for decision-making and emotion. So these animals can detect many chemical signals over great distances and can make rapid and accurate mental associations about them. </p>
<h2>2. How do researchers choose a target scent?</h2><p>In most studies that have used dogs to detect cancer, the dogs have identified physical samples, such as skin, urine or breath, from patients who either have been diagnosed with cancer or have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2004.04.008" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">undiagnosed cancer at an early stage</a>. Scientists don't know what odor cue the dogs use or whether it varies by type of cancer.</p><p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture's <a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/programs/nwrc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Wildlife Research Center</a> in Colorado and the <a href="https://monell.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Monell Chemical Senses Center</a> in Pennsylvania have trained mice to detect <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075411" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">avian influenza in fecal samples from infected ducks</a>. Bird flu is hard to detect in wild flocks, and it <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-in-humans.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">can spread to humans</a>, so this work is designed to help wildlife biologists monitor for outbreaks.</p><p>The Kimball lab at Monell taught the mice to get a reward when they smelled a confirmed positive sample from an infected animal. For example, mice would get a drink of water when they traveled down the arm of a Y-shaped maze that contained feces from a duck infected with avian influenza virus.</p><p>By chemically analyzing the fecal samples, researchers found that the concentration of volatile chemical compounds in them changed when a duck became infected with bird flu. So they inferred that this altered smell profile was what the mice recognized.</p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0UxLt3yugUA?wmode=transparent&start=0"></iframe><p>Members of the mustelid family, such as ferrets, badgers and otters, have highly developed senses of smell. Here a wolverine sniffs out frozen meat buried deep in the snow.</p><p>Building on that work, we've trained ferrets and dogs to detect avian influenza in fowl, such as wild ducks and domestic chickens, in a collaborative study between Colorado State University and the National Wildlife Research Center that is currently under review for publication.</p><p>With ferrets, we started by training them to alert, or signal that they had detected the target odor, by scratching on a box that contained high ratios of those volatile compounds and to ignore boxes that contained low ratios. Next we showed the ferrets fecal samples from both infected and noninfected ducks, and the ferrets immediately began alerting to the box containing the fecal sample from an infected duck.</p><p>This approach is similar to the way that dogs are trained to detect known volatile odors in explosives or illegal drugs. Sometimes, though, we have to let the detector animal determine the odor profile that it will respond to.</p>
<h2>3. Can animals be trained to detect more than one target?</h2><p>Yes. To avoid confusion about what a trained animal is detecting, we can teach it a different behavioral response for each target odor.</p><p>For example, the dogs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's <a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/programs/nwrc/sa_spotlight/sniffing+out+disease" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wildlife Services Canine Disease Detection Program</a> respond with an aggressive alert, such as scratching, when they detect a sample from a duck infected with bird flu. When they detect a sample from a white-tailed deer infected by the prion that causes <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">chronic wasting disease</a>, they respond with a passive alert such as sitting down.</p><p>Research at the University of Auburn has shown that dogs can remember and respond to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01362-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">72 odors during an odor memory task</a>. The only limitation is how many ways a dog can communicate about different odor cues.</p>
<h2>4. What kinds of factors can complicate this process?</h2><p>First, any organization that trains animals to detect disease needs the right type of laboratory and equipment. Depending on the disease, that could include personal protection equipment and air filtering.</p><p>Another concern is whether the pathogen might infect the detection animals. If that's a risk, researchers may need to inactivate the samples before they expose the animals. Then they need to see whether that process has altered the volatiles that they are teaching the animals to associate with infection.</p><p>Finally, handlers have to think about how to reinforce the desired response from detection animals in the field. If they are working in a population of mostly noninfected people – for example, in an airport – and an animal doesn't get a chance to earn a reward, it may lose interest and stop working. We look for animals that have a strong drive to work without stopping, but working for a long time without reward can be challenging for even the most motivated animal.</p>
<h2>5. Why not build a machine that can do this?</h2><p>Right now we don't have devices that are as sensitive as animals with well-developed senses of smell. For example, a dog's sense of smell is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2005.07.009" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">at least 1,000 times more sensitive than any mechanical device</a>. This could explain why dogs have detected cancer in tissue samples that have been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2004.04.008" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">medically cleared as not cancerous</a></p><p>We also know that ferrets can detect avian flu infection in fecal samples before and after laboratory analysis shows that the virus has stopped shedding. This suggests that for some pathogens, there may be changes in volatiles in individuals who are infected but are asymptomatic.</p><p>As scientists learn more about how mammals' sense of smell works, they'll have a better chance of creating devices that are as sensitive and reliable in sniffing out disease.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151832/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation"></p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/glen-j-golden-1186384" target="_blank">Glen J. Golden</a>, Research Scientist/Scholar I, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/colorado-state-university-1267" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Colorado State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-scent-of-sickness-5-questions-answered-about-using-dogs-and-mice-and-ferrets-to-detect-disease-151832" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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Why large groups of people often come to the same conclusions
Study confirms the existence of a special kind of groupthink in large groups.
14 January, 2021
Credit: Kaleb Nimz/Unsplash
Surprising Science
- Large groups of people everywhere tend to come to the same conclusions.
- In small groups, there's a much wider diversity of ideas.
- The mechanics of a large group make some ideas practically inevitable.
<p>People make sense of the world by organizing things into categories and naming them. "These are circles." "That's a tree." "Those are rocks." It's one way we tame our world. There's a weird correspondence between different cultures, though — even though we come from different places and very different circumstances, cultures everywhere develop largely the same categorizations.</p><p>"But this raises a big scientific puzzle," <a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/why-independent-cultures-think-alike-its-not-in-the-brain" target="_blank">says Damon Centola</a> of the University of Pennsylvania. "If people are so different, why do anthropologists find the same categories, for instance for shapes, colors, and emotions, arising independently in many different cultures? Where do these categories come from and why is there so much similarity across independent populations?"</p><p>Centola is the senior investigator of a new study in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20037-y?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncomms%2Frss%2Fcurrent+%28Nature+Communications+-+current%29" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nature Communications</a> from the Network Dynamics Group (NDG) at the Annenberg School for Communication that explores how such categorization happens.</p><p>Some have theorized that these categories are innate—pre-wired in our brains—but the study says "nope." Its authors hypothesize that it has more to do with the dynamics of large groups, or networks.</p>
The grouping game
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDE2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjI2MzA4OX0.RLrswIWbuEzHNqsw0F7EUrp9jPn7OulLPqCxcZT11ik/img.jpg?width=980" id="159b8" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0feb15d2d7dde144c710c2f4f1e5350c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2767" data-height="382" />Some of the shapes used in the experiment
Credit: Guilbeault, et al./University of Pennsylvania
<p>The researchers tested their theory with 1,480 people playing an online "Grouping Game" via Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. The individuals were paired with another participant or made a member of a group of 6, 8, 24, or 50 people. Each pair and group were tasked with categorizing the symbols shown above, and they could see each other's answers.</p><p>The small groups came up with wildly divergent categories—the entire experiment produced nearly 5,000 category suggestions—while the larger groups came up with categorization systems that were virtually identical to each other.</p><p><a href="https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/why-independent-cultures-think-alike-its-not-in-the-brain" target="_blank">Says Centol</a>a, "Even though we predicted it, I was nevertheless stunned to see it really happen. This result challenges many long-held ideas about culture and how it forms."</p><p>Nor was this unanimity a matter of having teamed-up like-minded individuals. "If I assign an individual to a small group," says lead author Douglas Guilbeault, "they are much more likely to arrive at a category system that is very idiosyncratic and specific to them. But if I assign that same individual to a large group, I can predict the category system that they will end up creating, regardless of whatever unique viewpoint that person happens to bring to the table."</p>Why this happens
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDE4NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMjkzMDg0Nn0.u2hdEIgNw4drFZ2frzx0AJ_MAxIizuM98rdovQrIblk/img.jpg?width=980" id="d3444" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5da57d66e388fad0f1c17afb09af90a7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="822" />The many categories suggested by small groups on the left, the few from large groups on the right
Credit: Guilbeault, et al./Nature Communications
<p>The striking results of the experiment correspond to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0607-5" target="_blank">previous study</a> done by NDG that investigated tipping points for people's behavior in networks.</p><p>That study concluded that after an idea enters a discussion among a large network of people, it can gain irresistible traction by popping up again and again in enough individuals' conversations. In networks of 50 people or more, such ideas eventually reach critical mass and become a prevailing opinion.</p><p>The same phenomenon does not happen often enough within a smaller network, where fewer interactions offer an idea less of an opportunity to take hold.</p>Beyond categories
<p>The study's finding raises an interesting practical possibility: Would categorization-related decisions made by large groups be less likely to fall prey to members' individual biases?</p><p>With this question in mind, the researchers are currently looking into content moderation on Facebook and Twitter. They're investigating whether the platforms would be wiser when categorizing content as free speech or hate speech if large groups were making these decisions instead of lone individuals working at these companies.</p><p>Similarly, they're also exploring the possibility that larger networks of doctors and healthcare professionals might be better at making diagnoses that would avoid biases such as racism or sexism that could cloud the judgment of individual practitioners.</p><p>"Many of the worst social problems reappear in every culture," notes Centola, "which leads some to believe these problems are intrinsic to the human condition. Our research shows that these problems are intrinsic to the social experiences humans have, not necessarily to humans themselves. If we can alter that social experience, we can change the way people organize things, and address some of the world's greatest problems."</p>
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Technology & Innovation
From NASA to your table: A history of food from thin air
A fairly old idea, but a really good one, is about to hit the store shelves.
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