This morning I was having brunch with Paul Hyams, a few guests and some other students, a weekly event at Cornell. At one point during the conversation, Paul made a comment referencing the six degrees of separation, and I couldn’t help but interject in protest.

The 6 degrees of separation concept is probably the most prevalent ideas explicitly about networks in human (or at least English-speaking) consciousness.  It figures prominently in our first assigned reading from The Tipping Point, a national bestseller. It is also completely wrong.

This will most likely be covered in class, and is nicely covered by this blog post from last year’s class, so I won’t bother reiterating these arguments.

Still, this clearly demonstrates that popular culture does a terrible job of addressing networks. In this case, it overestimates the connectivity of the social networks. In neurobiology, it grossly underestimates it; claims that humans only use 10% of their brains have been thoroughly debunked, but people keep believing it. Snopes does a good job of addressing this one.

Of course, this speaks to how information is spread throughout networks. Information seems to spread based on how attractive an idea may be, without any consideration for its verifiability. What does that say about us, as nodes? Do we only pass on the titillating? The popularity of sites such as fark.com seems to say so.

For more information about the debunking of Milgram’s 6 degrees of separation, see the article on which this blog post is based. Or, see a former Info 204 student’s take on it from last year.

Lepidoptera, an undergraduate in Neurobiology and Behavior, can be reached at lepidoptera@gmail.com with comments or complaints.