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Young Adult Degrees of Separation 186 Views


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Description:

No, this isn't like making a PhD and an MA go to their rooms because they’ve been fighting all evening. You're thinking of a Separation of Degrees.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Degrees of Separation, a la Shmoop. See that random guy across the aisle from

00:09

you in the grocery store?

00:10

Thank goodness you don't know him, or have anything to do with him.

00:13

Hey, buddy... you sure you don't need a few more pizza stains on your sweatpants, fella?

00:18

Hold on there, Captain Judgmental.

00:20

Officer Pepperoni Residue may be closer to you than you realize...

00:24

A theory known as Six Degrees of Separation was first proposed in 1929...

00:28

...in a play by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. <<free-yesh kah-rin-thee>>

00:33

It introduced the idea that you can pick any two people, anywhere in the world...

00:37

...and connect them in no more than six steps.

00:40

So, that weirdo in the freezer section...

00:42

...he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows...

00:46

...you. Sends shivers up your spine, doesn't it?

00:50

And not just because you're standing too close to the ice cream.

00:53

Psychologist Stanley Milgram tried testing the theory in the 1960s...

00:56

...by asking people to address a letter to a particular person...

01:00

...then mailing that letter to all their personal friends and asking them to forward to everyone

01:05

they knew...

01:06

...until it got to its intended target.

01:09

And spam was born.

01:11

However, Milgram got some pretty interesting results.

01:13

It never took more than 5 hops for the letters to get to their intended addressee.

01:18

Some argue that he didn't set up his experiment ideally though...

01:21

...so most consider the experiment inconclusive. The concept was further fleshed out in a second

01:28

play...

01:28

...written in 1990, and actually titled Six Degrees of Separation.

01:33

It was adapted to a film by the same name.

01:35

Will Smith starred in it. Back when he was just a wee little thing.

01:39

But the Six Degrees phenomenon was just picking up steam.

01:41

Three students at Albright College created a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon...

01:46

...who is this actor guy. He's been in a few films. Or 76.

01:51

The software they engineered allowed you to plug in any actor's name...

01:55

...as long as they had at least one credit on imdb...

01:59

...and they could connect that actor to Kevin Bacon in 6 steps or fewer.

02:04

You could even connect any actor to any other actor... Mr. Bacon did not even necessarily

02:09

need to be involved.

02:11

Although he does tend to get a little pouty when you leave him out of things.

02:15

In 2011, researchers at the University of Milan crunched some numbers...

02:19

...and found that, on average, Facebook users worldwide were separated by only 4.74 degrees.

02:28

And when they zeroed in on a single country, users were only 3 degrees apart.

02:33

So the next time you logon to Facebook and the site recommends some users you may be

02:37

friends with...

02:38

...don't be surprised to see this guy.

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