User talk:Buster7/Archives/2008/April

Flocking
a book...called "Critical mass - how one thing leads to another" by a Mr Philip Ball. Allegations of "conspiracy theories" are facile and knee-jerk and unreflective; the observation of flocking behaviour doesn't mean a belief that there is a sinister organising mind. Just that there is flocking behaviour.
 * Tipping point (sociology): Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
 * Mr Ball claims that tipping points are the result of many people following simple (?) rules, following their own self-interest, instincts etc. This can lead to group behaviour that none would want or predict. So when claims of a "cabal" are dismissed as "conspiracy theories" it might sound clever; but cabals exist without the need for any "conspiracy theory". Like the flocking minds who enforce British/American WP:BIAS even though their individual intentions may be WP:NPOV.
 * David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson's "Evolution 'for the Good of the Group'" in the September-October 2008 issue of American Scientist. This could challenge what Ball is saying.  See also: Group selection.
 * Ball makes great play about the fact that the supercooling is one way only; gas→liquid→solid. (It is central to some of his conclusions on traffic jams - or rather that there is some underlying principle connecting jams with substance phase transitions). The Wiki article says differently -