Posted on 02/08/2008 8:36:06 AM PST by forkinsocket
The famous 6 degrees of separation theory fades under scrutiny.
It’s rare for a sociological study to wind up a part of pop culture, but that’s what has happened to Stanley Milgram’s “small world” study, which posits that all of the people on the planet are connected to one another through an average of six acquaintances—or through six degrees of separation. The first popular use of Milgram’s study was the John Guare play Six Degrees of Separation, which was later made into a movie. Then came the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, created by college students, in which players must connect the actor to another actor by no more than six other people. In 2006 there was the TV show Six Degrees, which told the story of six characters who, according to the network, “go about their lives without realizing the impact they are having on one another.” Even the popular PBS series American Masters has jumped on the six degrees bandwagon, with a Web game that allows you to pick any two of the accomplished people it has profiled through the years—everyone from Aaron Copland to William Styron—and find the links that connect them. How are Truman Capote and Lucille Ball connected? This is the Web engine’s answer: Truman Capote is connected to Lena Horne because Horne appeared in the book Observations by Capote and Richard Avedon. Horne is connected to Lucille Ball because they—along with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly—were in the Ziegfeld Follies.
But perhaps the most interesting use of Milgram’s study came from Judith Kleinfeld, a psychology professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. In 2002 she realized she had a problem in her classroom.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovermagazine.com ...
I suspect he’s been dead since Tora Bora.
He’s dead, Jim.
“Kleinfeld assumed that Milgram’s study must have been replicated for his results to have been so widely and enthusiastically accepted.”
There’s the problem, right there.
Well, the fact that Pakistan has off-limit tribal areas to hide in hasn’t helped. Blame Pakistan for shielding him. If Osama had stayed in Afghanistran, we’d have caught up to him.
Seriously, I read the title, and the article and was think Obama the whole time until near the end of the article. I must have Ted Kennedy syndrome.
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