Thursday, August 4, 2011

Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas

I was interested to discover it takes over 10% of the population to hold an unshakable belief before the majority of society even take that belief seriously. This has incredible significance for gold and particularly silver as an investment. With under 1% of global financial assets held in gold and almost none held in silver, and with gold and silver bugs also being as rare as the metals themselves one has to conclude that over 10% of society attaining an unshakable belief in precious metals is light years away!

So next time you hear a friend, or financial advisor say that gold & silver are in a bubble, ask them: "Do more than 10% of the population own and share an unshakable belief that precious metals will continue to rise, as was the case during the dot.com and real estate bubbles?" ~ you can't have a bubble in an asset that almost no one owns.

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Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.

“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.”

The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E in an article titled “Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities.”

Read more at RPI News.

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