- Facebook's growth curve looks like that of an infectious disease
and
- "Ideas, like diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before eventually dying out, and have been successfully described with epidemiological models,"
therefore
- Facebook will die out as per the epidemiological model.
Allow me to respond to that in a manner appropriate to the level of rigorousness of the argument:
Bullshit. Shoddy analogy at best, wilfully stupid attention whoring at worst.
Why do you believe this analogy will not apply to Facebook?
Social media is called 'viral' for a reason: because its spread is apparently analogous to infectious disease. This analogy certainly does seem to apply to other memes and social networks of the past - why would Facebook be an exception?
The argument isn't that it won't apply to Facebook. Rather, the assertion that the analogy will apply is unscientific. It is an assertion of the form: A and B have behaved the same so far. Thus, A and B are of the same nature, and will continue to behave the same indefinitely--an improperly drawn conclusion
"Viral" is just a word. The fact that we have repurposed it to refer to electronic media does not magically impart to electronic media the properties of biological viruses.
The conclusive headline (use of the word will) is the Guardian's editorial decision, not used by the scientists, if that's the main objection.
The article has a more measured statement: "Extrapolating the best fit model into the future suggests that Facebook will undergo a rapid decline in the coming years, losing 80% of its peak user base between 2015 and 2017."
Observing common network effects and using it to make predictions seems like valid scienfitic research to me. The hypothesis may or may not be correct, but it's a (very) testable and falsifiable hypothesis. The science is good.
Edited to add - jarrett: I accept your point that the research could be more thorough; it's a shame only Myspace data appears to have been used. However, I think this is a valid thread of research and the word 'bullshit' was unwarranted.
Yes, it is a testable and falsifiable hypothesis. So is "George Washington will be elected President in 2016." Nonetheless, we can fairly argue that both hypotheses lack a firm grounding in the evidence.
> Observing common network effects and using it to make predictions seems like valid scienfitic research to me.
It's valid I suppose, but purely speculative at this point. It would be much more meaningful if a study demonstrated that social networks almost always behave like viruses in both their growth and decline, than to simply observe a similarity and growth and extrapolate the decline.
Which of the above posts is "just saying 'I don't like it' over and over?" This thread is a discussion of the structure of a certain argument. To recap:
swombat3 explains why he thinks Princeton's method of reasoning by analogy is flawed. ronaldx disagrees, asking why the analogy wouldn't be applicable. I reply that, in my view, ronaldx has disagreed with a different point than the one swombat3 made. ronaldx replies in defense of Princeton's claims, citing the testability and falsifiability of the hypothesis. I reply that there is little evidence for the hypothesis, despite its testability and falsifiability.
So, all participants have advanced specific, well-articulated arguments throughout. I don't see anything similar to "I don't like it."
Humorously, this discussion has become rather meta by now. We're now arguing about the form of argumentation used in a discussion that was itself about forms of argumentation. It's like we're living out an LSAT question. I find that sort of conversation hard to resist, so I suppose I'm just rising to the bait.
>swombat3 explains why he thinks Princeton's method of reasoning by analogy is flawed. ronaldx disagrees, asking why the analogy wouldn't be applicable. I reply that, in my view, ronaldx has disagreed with a different point than the one swombat3 made. ronaldx replies in defense of Princeton's claims, citing the testability and falsifiability of the hypothesis. I reply that there is little evidence for the hypothesis, despite its testability and falsifiability.
There's not an argument in this entire paragraph. Is it meant to be a list of pointers to arguments?
Neither "X is(n't) flawed," "X is(n't) applicable," nor "X has (very little/lots of) evidence" is an argument.
An argument for falsifiability is an argument that the statement of a particular belief has content and is not just a trick of language, but can't be said to be an argument for or against that particular belief.
> There's not an argument in this entire paragraph. Is it meant to be a list of pointers to arguments?
As stated, it's a recap, or summary, of arguments previously made. So no, the arguments themselves are not contained or fully expressed in the summary. In this sense you're correct that it's a list of pointers to arguments--arguments which can be readily located earlier in the same thread.
> Neither "X is(n't) flawed," "X is(n't) applicable," nor "X has (very little/lots of) evidence" is an argument.
Correct. Those are conclusions. The arguments presented in support of those conclusions are available earlier in the thread.
> An argument for falsifiability is an argument that the statement of a particular belief has content and is not just a trick of language, but can't be said to be an argument for or against that particular belief.
Agreed. That's why I said the falsifiability of Princeton's hypothesis was not an argument for the likelihood of that hypothesis. I think we're on the same page about this.
Follow-up reply to ronaldx's edit: I personally would not have (and didnt't) use the word "bullshit" in this context, so I agree with you there. I still agree with swombat3's overall argument, though.
I believe "3" comes from "3 hours ago", which was displayed next to your username at the time when user jarrett mentioned you. So I presume it's just a slight copy-paste typo.
Not everything needs to be scientific. Even a lot of mathematics is figured out first using intuition. The proof may come much much later.
Some people do have intuition that is superior to other people. They can see patterns and connections in things and intuit the correct answer, or predict the right path. Much like Steve Jobs. It's an artistic, intuitive way of looking at things rather than a purely scientific way. Sometimes it doesn't work; sometimes it does.
Fair point. Indeed, not everything needs to be scientific. Though for empirical claims that science is capable of addressing (as opposed to, e.g., what is morally right), claims that are based on sound scientific reasoning are more worthy of attention than claims that lack such a basis. I consider Princeton's claim to be one which fits this criterion: It is empirical, and it concerns a topic which is amenable to scientific inquiry. Therefore I find it appropriate to critique the claim in scientific terms.
Why do I believe it will? Seems like a pretty extraordinary claim. There are plenty of other tech businesses that saw meteoritic growth, and they didn't all peter out like diseases.
Many forces that are at play with diseases (immunity for one) are absent with tech products, and a big one from tech products (the fact that the tech product is built by a company filled with intelligent people who want it to succeed) is absent from diseases.
Infectious diseases seems like a pretty tenuous analogy for a 10-year old tech business with thousands of employees.
As someone partial to the concept of memetics and Universal Darwinism, I happen to like when biological/Darwinian principles are applied to higher-level concepts. That being said, there may be ways to differ with the article's analysis even within the biological analogy: it's possible that Facebook and its users have a symbiotic relationship (social features in exchange for traffic/attention/ad impressions) in which case the user base may continue to stay with the site until an even more advantageous website comes along.
Perhaps the main reason why we are so strongly inclined to talk of the head as the locality of our thoughts is this: the existence of the words "thinking" and "thought" alongside of the words denoting (bodily) activities, such as writing, speaking, etc., makes us look for an activity, different from these but analogous to them, corresponding to the word "thinking". When words in our ordinary language have prima facie analogous grammars we are inclined to try to interpret them analogously; i.e. we try to make the analogy hold throughout. -- We say, "The thought is not the same as the sentence; for an English and a French sentence, which are utterly different, can express the same thought". And now, as the sentences are somewhere, we look for a place for the thought. (It is as though we looked for the place of the king of which the rules of chess treat, as opposed to the places of the various bits of wood, the kings of the various sets.) -- We say, "surely the thought is something; it is not nothing"; and all one can answer to this is, that the word "thought" has its use, which is of a totally different kind from the use of the word "sentence".
^ that's Wittgenstein and not me writing there, but I believe that responds to your claim adequately.
It depends on the virus. Most viruses you can only get once, then you fight off the infection (according to the model, anyway). Facebook may be a little more like herpes.
The largest indicator of bullshit (as I've commented below) is that based on their model, ALL infections of this type go to zero. They could have modeled Apple, Google, Christianity, or Bitcoin and reach the same conclusion (albeit with different timeframes, I'm sure).
I am rather surprised by this constraint on the model, as an extremely straightforward modification to the standard SIR model allows for diseases to reach an endemic equilibrium state.
It's an interesting way of looking at it, but there doesn't need to be a more complicated explanation for the eventual fall of Facebook than the fact that it's always been the pattern for social networks. There's fundamentally more novelty than real value to it so people will lose interest and it will be supplanted by whatever else has the property of being novel. (And lucky, and in the right place at the right time.)
You just don't need something like Facebook to stay connected to your close friends, and the interactions you have with your larger "network" are inherently shallow and capable of being disrupted in the move from one social network to another or disposed of completely.
For individual social networks, yes. But what if we lumped all social networks together, and looked at aggregate usage over time? It would constantly increase. I think that instead of dying out, it will plateau until we reach saturation. Other communication technologies follow this model: radio, television, telephones, cell phones, etc.
Rather than being a novelty, I think that the past decade has demonstrated that online social networks are something most people want and will continue to use.
To be clear, you and I are making contradicting factual predictions about the future. Neither of us knows which prediction will turn out to be true. At the moment, the available data fits both of our predictions. We'll know in about 20 years.
The level of discourse was brought down to below zero by the article. I'm actually raising it, if anything. This is an appallingly bad "forecast" and I'm slightly ashamed on behalf of Princeton for allowing their name to be associated with it.
Also, if you look at my comment history, I don't habitually use "such coarse language". I only use it in appropriate circumstances - like in response to this article. The coarse language has little to do with the karma.
Edit: worth noting that the title of the article on Guardian is "Facebook will lose 80% of its users by 2017", not may. That has been editorialised by the submitter. The article is even worse than you may think if all you read was the title.
it's only a bad forecast if it doesn't happen. if it does happen, then it's a freaking awesome INTUITIVE forecast. Okay, so there's no science behind it? It doesn't matter. There's no science behind a lot of things, yet they work.
When you recognize insane patterns and connections, much like an Artist as opposed to a Scientist, things can work. All that needs to matter is that the intuition has to be right. The science can come after.
I wasn't communicating with the authors of the article, just with the commenters here. I was not even insulting the authors (only the "forecast"). You, on the other hand, are throwing insults at people (me in particular) - and doing so in a largely inarticulate manner.
Another pretty poor analogy, I suppose. I can see why you liked the article. </sheldon-joke-mode>
Oh give me a break. He made a very good point -- the article takes the epidemiological model analogy too far and in a non-rigorous fashion. You are the one "lowering the level of discourse" by focusing on form instead of content and by writing in clichés.
we don't even know yet if it takes it too far. What happens when 2017 comes along and facebook has lost exactly 80.00% of users since 2014? Will it still have been an analogy taken too far?
i guess that could be true. The other day i was trying to convince someone that you cannot use a mathematical conjecture if a proof has not been found yet. I think I succeeded.
Your observation reminded me of the Million Short search engine that skips past the first N ranked hits.
Is there a name for the phenomenon that the first entries in any contested ranking tend to be less interesting?
There's something about the ranking systems used on the web in the way they tally the nearly-effort-free actions of hordes (clicks, likes, upvotes, star ratings) that means they represent one kind of magnitude (statistical average impulse behavior) but very little of another (deeper reflection & significance). Deeper stuff tends to see less impulse attention and therefore sinks down the ranking, but is there some other way to identify it?
It's the same phenomenon that creates pop music, pulp literature, prime time TV, summer blockbusters, two-party voting systems, and AAA games. The mainstream tends to be safe, non-threatening, and appeal to a wide variety of audiences. There may be a genre/topic/idea that better suits people, but it takes work to find it and not everyone wants to put in that work.
Not everyone will like Thelonious Monk, and the same people who like him might not like Americana or electro house or black metal. But no one complains about smooth or cool jazz. No one complains about mainstream country. No one complains about techno, no one complains about hard rock on the radio. They're watered down, appeal to wide audiences, and are non-offensive in their broad market. It takes no effort to like mainstream culture, and it doesn't demand anything from your intellectually. You're going to like the Billboard Hot 100, or at the very least you're not going to hate it, because it's been manufactured to be liked by everyone.
Same thing with high rated comments in a lot of cases. While the poster might not actually be saying anything, might not have a point, might not have any intellectual depth to their comment, their comment offended no one, was easy to understand, and can be appreciated at face value without needing to think about it. If you can get people to like your ideas without making them think, you're going to be popular. If you make them think, they have the chance to decide if they like what you're saying or not, and if you make them think, you give them the chance to decide that they don't like you.
It's intrinsic vs perceived values in ranking. You could have some rough measure of intrinsic value of a comment by analyzing its content: length, grammars, wording sophistication, etc. It's definitely not trivial and maybe open to spams.
Right but we can do science here. Myspace, Friendster, Google+... We know a lot about how social networking plays out. There's enough of a sample size there to start doing some observations and making some hypothesis.
Yes, when you have only 6 things to look at you might take an educated guess based on what might have happened to the first 5. It's the sort of contextual, gut-driven judgement people call a hunch.
That's fine for a conversation about facebook after a few beers... it's pretty silly to take that and write a flippin' paper about it and present it as "research".
So there's 'we know the way social media plays out' and there's actual science and the two phenomena have nothing in common beyond 'we drew conclusions based on what we saw'. The difference is that the latter is rigorously controlled, tested and peer-reviewed for according to a vetted methodology, and the former is no different from saying 'basically all asian people I have met are good at math, thus this new asian person I have just now met must also be good at math'
- Facebook's growth curve looks like that of an infectious disease
and
- "Ideas, like diseases, have been shown to spread infectiously between people before eventually dying out, and have been successfully described with epidemiological models,"
therefore
- Facebook will die out as per the epidemiological model.
Allow me to respond to that in a manner appropriate to the level of rigorousness of the argument:
Bullshit. Shoddy analogy at best, wilfully stupid attention whoring at worst.