Why Do All Hipsters Look the Same? Let’s Ask Math!
This is from Discover magazine, so it has to be true, right? It even comes with a couple of fancy diagrams that are impressive, even though I don’t understand them.
I quote from the article:
The skinny jeans, the progressive politics, the Instagram photos: Hipsters, like goths and punk rockers before them, have become a cliché. And we’ve all become more like them as well.
Now math has shown the reason why. A new mathematical model shows that our collective strivings for individuality end up accomplishing the opposite, even if we’re aiming toward different points of “weird.”
It’s just math, says, Paul Smaldino in a paper just published in the journalRoyal Society Open Science. Smaldino created a model of how human behavior adds up into collective conformity, precisely because we want to be individuals. Yet the takeaways contain a morsel of hope for how radical individuals can still change the broader society.
