Su suggerimento di @ulrich.
Ci sono quelli mainstream, e poi ci sono gli anticonformisti, qui hipsters. E succede che gli hipsters diventino mainstream. Un paper di Jonathan Touboul (PDF) spiega come scegliere la giacca più hip dell’inverno e dà un colpo d’occhio su come fenomeni di questo tipo si possano spiegare. E non solo per studiare il picco dei baffi a manubrio.
In such di fferent domains as statistical physics and spin glasses, neurosciences, social science,economics and finance, large ensemble of interacting individuals taking their decisions either in accordance (mainstream) or against (hipsters) the majority are ubiquitous. Yet, trying hard to be di fferent often ends up in hipsters consistently taking the same decisions, in other words all looking alike. We resolve this apparent paradox studying a canonical model of statistical physics, enriched by incorporating the delays necessary for information to be communicated. We show a generic phase transition in the system: when hipsters are too slow in detecting the trends, they will keep making the same choices and therefore remain correlated as time goes by, while their trend evolves in time as a periodic function. This is true as long as the majority of the population is made of hipsters. Otherwise, hipsters will be, again, largely aligned, towards a constant direction which is imposed by the mainstream choices. Beyond the choice of the best suit to wear this winter, this study may have important implications in understanding dynamics of inhibitory networks of the brain or investment strategies finance, or the understanding of emergent dynamics in social science, domains in which delays of communication and the geometry of the systems are prominent.
Immagine da flickr.
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