Do you believe in the six degrees of separation?

The theory is that 2 people are only 6 steps or less away from each other via a friend-of-a-friend chain.

To prove that Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus or David Beckham are just 6 friend away from you, you just have to find a friend who knows someone who knows someone, 6 times or less, until they reach one of these celebrities. Using the same way, you can also prove a personal connection to anyone from a Papua New Guinea tribesman to Queen Elizabeth.

What I am interested in is whether anyone can think of a case to disprove this theory of six degrees. Anyone?

Actually some say 5. The theory originated by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929. In 1961 another guy called Michael Gurevich did a detailed study of it in his phD paper.

You can google it up for more info.

Why not?

1. The aborigine has a friend in a nearby village.
2. That friend has a relative who works in town.
3. The relative has a boss whose cousin studies in Australia.
4. The cousin has a facebook fren in America.
5. The facebook fren has a sister who works as a talent agent in entertainment line.
6. The sister knows Justin Bieber in person.

You missed out one line. That one friend has no other friends, acquaintances or family member that knows any other people.

---

Added on May 7, 2010, 2:01 pmBut if its already proven true, it removes any reason to prove it false right? A proven constant cannot carry two values.

Anyway I tested the theory on myself. Not the most scientific I know but it seems to hold water, mostly within 5 degrees. I'm just trying to think of a scenario that can poke a hole in that theory.


This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 7 2010, 02:01 PM

Hmmm... can u give an example?

I can't wrap my mind around a scenario where I have 5 fingers (proven true) and a condition in which that statement can be shown false.

True, but the all swans are white proposition would immediately attract the hasty generalization fallacy wouldn't it, just on the point that its a generalization. How it applies to the proposition there are 5 fingers on my hand I don't know, as its not a generalization but a specific physical manifestation. I wouldn't know how to disprove that I have 5 fingers.

We're in agreement then. I am trying to disprove the six degrees theory by trying to find one scenario that proves it false. Since the number 6 was an outcome of some guy's statistical analysis (I think), one can refute with an alternative analysis, maybe by checking if the sample size, sample choice or margin of error had led to a faulty conclusion. But we don't have the data so its much easier to just ask if anyone had seen a real black swan and prove the proposition false.

Without a real study, you guess is as good as mine.

Anyway it was probably a question like yours that led the original theory to come up with the number 6. If I was doing that study, I would definitely have taken the nobodies into account.

Imagine it this way. Someone wrote a PhD thesis that claim all swans are white and becoz u have some doubt about it, you go to a forum like LYN and ask does anyone here know anyone who has ever seen a black swan? Not sure which part of that is oxymoronic.

Definitely no one in LYN is isolated, I agree. I wasn't asking for a real live case anyway. I was asking if you can imagine one scenario where this can be logically disproved. A thought experiment if you will.

As with any thought experiment, our imagination is the limit so I will try to give you a best case scenario to connect #3 to #5.

Lighthouse operators are usually connected to the shipping business. They provide coastal guideposts for ships.

Liberia is also connected with ships. It maintains a popluar maritime registry where it makes money.

There is a possible intersection point. #3 may at one time met #5 when he delivered oil to Pyongyang on a Liberian registered tanker. People connected to the same industry do cross paths. They may have met on shore break. #5 may have quit the shipping, went into self employment where he hired B.

So point #4 can happen under those circumstances.

I think the scenario you give might have endless permutations. Even no phone or internet won't prevent the A & B from crossing paths by other means, like on foot under the most weird coincidences. They still got refugees coming from North Korea, Liberia and other isolated countries who might meet, of all places, in New York City. Any number of them could start talking about the people in your scenario, maybe a friend or relative they left behind. Remote chance yes but not impossible.

I think a broken link is only possible if the two individuals A & B are completely isolated from birth, from each other and other humans, including from its own parents.

Example, a baby that is born in the jungle with no witnesses around and is immediately abandoned at birth. When the parents die, its one and only link to the outside world is broken. Nobody knew it was born, nobody knew it exist. As long as it doesn't meet anyone after that, it is truly alone.

If there is such a person alive, then we have proof that one black swan exist.

I can actually give you one example close to it. I know someone, for real, who's employed by the American INS (immigration & naturalization service). A relative who works in the section that handles refugees becoz of his ability to speak Chinese. He has handled defectors from China and N Korea. They tell him sad stories of the relatives and friends they left behind.

So I know my relative by name, he knows his refugees by name, and the refugees know the isolated children in some N Korean or Chinese village by name. There's only 3 hops between me and some kid in the isolated village.

Actually using the same method, I've tested the theory by drawing some personal mapping to some people on the planet. 5 hops to Obama, 4 hops to a woman living in the German Alps, 3 hops to one family in Heilongjiang where there's no internet, and 3 hops to an Israeli engineer residing in Israel, a country where Malaysia has no diplomatic relationship.

Yes this is a friend of a friend chain. Real friend, not facebook friend or a casual stranger overheard in the street. Everyone in the chain knows the connecting friend by name.



This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 7 2010, 10:35 PM

The theory is based on the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, meaning if its less than 6 the theory still holds. The challenge is to find one example that is more than 6, or one that has zero.

True. I was just modeling my own case to test the hypothesis and not intending to generalize it to every North Korean.




This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 8 2010, 01:57 AM

You have a good point there. Why didn't think of that. Thanks!

Please refrain from making personal attacks in this thread.

From LYN forum rules:
Do not troll or flame. Do not intentionally post inflammatory message.

That sounds like a reasonable idea, sparda.

Of course, the exception would be the outliers... the hermits as you say. We were looking for that proverbial black swan that would invalidate the hypothesis.

p/s you got mascara running down your nose (yr avatar) but you probably knew that already.