"Six Degrees of Separation" - How many to be a 'terrorist'?

TahitiNut

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Fri May-12-06 01:04 PM
Original message

Poll question: "Six Degrees of Separation" - How many to be a 'terrorist'?

Edited on Fri May-12-06 01:25 PM by TahitiNut

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than ~~four~~ five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called Chains. The concept is based on the idea that the number of acquaintances grows exponentially with the number of links in the chain, and so only a small number of links is required for the set of acquaintances to become the whole human population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

See also ... http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4037&print=true

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greendog

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Fri May-12-06 01:07 PM
Response to Original message

1. Osama Bin Laden, Salem Bin Laden, George W. Bush

Easy enough.

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Dunvegan

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Fri May-12-06 01:25 PM
Response to Reply #1

5. Yes. We have a winner! Found the domestic terrorist.

Now, NSA: Destroy that totalitarian database, pronto...you have your man.

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Dunvegan

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Fri May-12-06 01:09 PM
Response to Original message

2. This is EXACTLY what "social network analysis" is about...

Edited on Fri May-12-06 01:11 PM by Dunvegan

...degrees of separation.

And that's too easy by far when we have an error-riddled no-fly list of over 200,000 people.

Here's a map of how analysts use data for "social network analysis":

This is a social network analysis (sans names) of the 911 pilots.

Too easy by far in three degrees of separation to tie you with your friend's cousin's friend.

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TahitiNut

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Fri May-12-06 01:19 PM
Response to Reply #2

4. In a math-illiterate nation, it's scary to think about how easily ...

... folks might go along with the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend vigilantism.

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TahitiNut

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Fri May-12-06 01:17 PM
Response to Original message

3. For anyone who's puzzled, the NSA database is ideal for measuring this.

Again, see http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4037&print=true

Email experiment confirms six degrees of separation

19:00 07 August 2003
NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight

Despite enabling almost instantaneous global communication, email appears not to have made the world a more close-knit community.

Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University in New York conducted a massive email experiment to test the theory of "six degrees of separation", i.e. that everyone in the world can be linked through just six social ties.

More than 60,000 people from 166 different countries took part in the experiment. Participants were assigned one of 18 target people. They were asked to contact that person by sending email to people they already knew and considered potentially "closer" to the target. The targets were chosen at random and included a professor from America, an Australian policeman and a veterinarian from Norway.

The researchers found that it in most cases it took between five and seven emails to contact the target. Watts says this shows that email has not fundamentally changed the way social ties are created.

<snip>

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sutz12

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Fri May-12-06 01:27 PM
Response to Original message

6. Everybody is a terra-ist....if they want them to be.

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annabanana

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Fri May-12-06 02:08 PM
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7. This IS what the data is good for. This is the ONLY thing

that this data is good for. You plug in differnt criteria and you can determine who hangs with who.

(nom)

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titoresque

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Fri May-12-06 02:10 PM
Response to Original message

8. Other

:hide:

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SammyBlue

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Fri May-12-06 02:15 PM
Response to Original message

9. Here is how I'm a terrorist

I was born a New York Jew(1) which muslim hate(2) due to Israel(3) that is the sworn enemy of Osama Bin Laden(4) who attacked my home town(5) which, because of his hatred of Jews, makes me a terrorist(6).

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TahitiNut

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Fri May-12-06 05:43 PM
Response to Original message

10. I wonder how many poll workers in Election 2004 were too few ...

Edited on Fri May-12-06 05:44 PM by TahitiNut

... degrees of separation from terrorists? I wonder how the call records were used then, when various organizations set up call-in numbers to report election fraud? Seems to me that Ohio and Florida were more than covered - even without Qwest.

My, my, my ... such an interesting database. :eyes:

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