Comments on: Dr. Slammy’s Law of Social Communication

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:18:49 +0000

Haha. I think anything with the word NAD in it would be overruled by default.

I think we have officially exponentially increased the noise. Heh.

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:44:13 +0000

Good catch. I lobbied for something that turned into SINAD [signal to noise and distortion, mathematically S/(N+D)] but was overruled.

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:18:49 +0000

You know, I’m probably just really really slow, but I just realized that S&R = SNR (signal noise ratio). How did I not see that before?

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:55:36 +0000

I believe it.

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:16:59 +0000

Sigmoids are all over electronics too, usually in the curves for diodes, transistors, and the response of optical semiconductors.

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:05:04 +0000

That last one is easy. Is you readership continuing to expand or has it peaked? If it has peaked, then the noise has also probably peaked. There’s only so much noise 5 people can generate (even if one of those 5 people is me. heh).

The system as a whole will follow the same rules. What do you mean by “system?” What’s included in that? Just the Interwebs? Or are you also including TV, Radio, etc? If you are talking about them separately, then I would consider them individual entities, competing for for finite resources. And the finite resource is “people with access” and, possibly, bandwidth (as hackers know all too well with “denial of service” attacks).

In the end, I guess it really doesn’t matter. As long as we have an increasing population, and as long as we have increasing access, you will have exponential increases in both noise and signal. Saturation becomes increasingly unlikely.

Now, once we fill up the planet, that’ll be a different situation and a plateau becomes a possibility.

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:42:10 +0000

Mike: not talking about a particular communication. Talking about the system as a whole. And re: the blogosphere and our current social media landscape, let me know when the noise plateaus.

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:41:11 +0000

Hehehe. Sorry. I’ve been trying to understand particle swarms and population dynamics the last few days and some ideas are jumbled up in my head. Sigmoids seem to show up everywhere from the lowest bacteria up to social networks.

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:27:17 +0000

I don’t know what’s scarier – the fact that these three posts (especially your “sigmoidal” one) could qualify as “noise,” or the fact I understood them well enough know that they’re anything but….

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:17:44 +0000

Oh, and I bet both signal and noise are more sigmoidal than exponential. There’s a lag phase, a relatively linear (or maybe even exponential) phase, followed by a plateau. Basically, you saturate the market and/or suck up all available resources.

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:12:27 +0000

I guess that would be feed back. If that were the case, even if they were both exponential, all it would take for the noise to quickly overwhelm the signal is for the “noise” feed back constant to be greater.

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:10:12 +0000

Doesn’t it depend on the “popularity” of the signal? For instance, take “the impact of interleukin-1 on brain-immune communication.” It’s a hugely important signal in the psychoneuroimmunology field, but anyone outside the field has no idea WTF it is.

Although, now that I think about it, the health/natural remedy people have certainly added a bunch of noise to the conversation…

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:46:31 +0000

Any idea where it’s been said before?

By: jeff watson

jeff watson — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:37:56 +0000

Sam,

That’s been said before, and is so correct.

Jeff