Cascading Thresholds
Article source: https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2011/10/26/information-cascades
The article discusses information cascades observed in different situations like the Arab Spring and the financial crises. For example, the article talks about how protests in New York City may have influenced protests in Boston and other US cities. More interestingly, these protests also spread to many other cities outside the US.
One question that comes up is why these cities and not others? Well, one thing these cities have in common is that they were all large cities. We can suggest that cascades are more likely to occur in highly populated networks. This is because in dense populations, everyone is likely to have many edges, each of which could potentially influence the individual.
Apart from this, it is important to think about what the thresholds for these situations really look like. Does it take half of the people in the country to run a successful revolution? Does it take more? Or less? While thinking about this, it is also important to keep in mind that in the real world, there are some strong social influencers as discussed in class. These play a huge role in the success or failure of a cascade. For example, during elections, it is common for politicians in some countries to simply bribe some voters and tip the odds in their favor. Here, it would take a lot more than half of the voting population to run a cascade that achieves its purpose, in this case, regime change. This is because if only slightly more than half eventually join the cascade, it is easy for the regime to bribe a few of them to change the outcome.