“Six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.”
And further, what would happen if Google went beyond mapping out houses and landscapes and initiated a penpal program between neighbors? Could the entire world be capable of “getting to know” eachother? And in that case, what would happen?
What this means is that I could pick anyone, any person in the world (including you, Ugly ), and find them through a process of navigating my own social network, in just six easy steps… well, maybe it’s not easy, but the first step would be to find the person in my social network who is one degree separated from me, the person who is the first in the line of six who will connect me to that randomly chosen person. The question is: how do I know which person that is? I don’t know what the average number of first-degree friends is among people–maybe 200 on facebook–but it wouldn’t be that hard to iterate through them. The problem comes when you move on to the second or third degree of separation. If we go with my guess of 200 people on average for the first degree, the numbers could become quite staggering very early on–by your third degree, you certainly have your work cut out for you.
But I suppose a computer might be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time.
I’ll leave the mathematical implications of this up to you (because I’m too dumb to think mathematically). I think the political implications would be more interesting though.
If you assume that on average each person knows merely 10 other people with whom they could introduce you, the math would indicate that the random chances of you being introduced through your “6 degrees of separation” model would be:
10 * 10 * 10* 10 * 10 * 10
= 10^6 = 1,000,000 to 1
And if every person, on average only knew 2 people with whom to introduce you:
= 2^6 = 64 to 1
Google wouldn’t have any trouble with any of that (merely facebook statistics), but then … to what end?
The thought of it is strictly political - “one world”, “globalism”, “we are all the same”, “we are one”, “we all serve the same world order governance … forever more”. in short, there is only one life on planet Earth … and you aren’t it.
That is a fallacy, but I appreciate what you had in mind of doing your civic duty to warn us of the oncoming global unconsciousness and of the dreadful One World Order. Now, I don’t think that is what the girl had in mind, nor do I think Six Degrees is some grand conspiracy made by the government to brainwash us all, I think its just trying to be nice saying we are all connected.
Nope, your allowed Cravings in Christianity, especially for God, it is Buddhism that disallows desires and cravings.
Its only after we imported Stoic concepts of vices and virtues under thinkers like Origin and Didymus the Blind did this arise, or with monasticism such as St. Anthony. Both have examples from the life of Jesus to point to for legitimacy, but it wasn’t essential save for those more devout… even Jesus got his feet rubbed on occasion and dined out with friends.
You would know these things if they gave you a proper education up in Calgary.
I was brought up and educated in Saskatoon. Only did grade 12 in Calgary. I also went to the U of C.
But this is one of the things that confuses me about Buddhism. If one is to abandon all attachments and desires, how is one even to try resisting temptations and cravings? Doesn’t that indicate an attachment to some goal, to some desire to become a better Buddhist if nothing else?
), and find them through a process of navigating my own social network, in just six easy steps… well, maybe it’s not easy, but the first step would be to find the person in my social network who is one degree separated from me, the person who is the first in the line of six who will connect me to that randomly chosen person. The question is: how do I know which person that is? I don’t know what the average number of first-degree friends is among people–maybe 200 on facebook–but it wouldn’t be that hard to iterate through them. The problem comes when you move on to the second or third degree of separation. If we go with my guess of 200 people on average for the first degree, the numbers could become quite staggering very early on–by your third degree, you certainly have your work cut out for you.