It Isn't Just About Kevin Bacon
Most of us have heard about the “Six Degrees of Separation of Kevin Bacon”.
Something of a parlour game, the idea is to connect an actor with Kevin Bacon in six steps or fewer. An oft-cited example of how the game works is where we start with Elvis Presley in the 1969 movie “Change of Habit” where Presley acted alongside Ed Asner. Asner was in the 1991 film “JFK” and so was Kevin Bacon. Therefore, Asner is one degree of separation from Bacon, and Presley checks in at two degrees.
Recently, I discovered that I have rather circuitous and improbable fifth degree of separation from the choreographer and director Bob Fosse. More recently I discovered a faster track that connects me to the musician Frank Zappa. Both connections seem rather “random”, particularly since I have no life experience with film or rock music. I’ve never met either person, and of course never will, as they are both deceased.
There has been some serious research on the interconnectedness amongst us all. One of the most relevant studies was conducted, somewhat indirectly, by the late Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős. He was studying a formula that became known as the “Erdős Number”, the intent of which was to assess a “collaborative distance” between authors of mathematical papers.
Erdős created a visual example of his thinking in this regard, using buttons and threads. If you are so inclined (as I was — you can't imagine my kitchen table and the quizzical looks from my husband), you can do the experiment yourself. Place a bunch of buttons on a table and link some of them together with pieces of thread. If you link just a small portion of the buttons, and then pull a random thread, only a few buttons will be caught up. However, if you connect several buttons with multiple threads to other buttons (forming clusters), and then pull any thread, almost all the buttons get tugged along.
Does this little intellectual curiosity matter? I think so.
There are algorithms of social media, and the internet in general, where our random threads are connected, and which create an actual web where we can be ensnared and influenced. Nothing new here, but the point is relevant to our general connectedness.
Based on the research done by serious scientists (meaning peer reviewed scholars), it would appear that, like the buttons and like Kevin Bacon, we are all connected by less than six degrees of separation.
Everyone.
Every person on the planet.
From me to you.
From you to a Maori tribal member in New Zealand.
Data from 2011 suggests that Facebook linked around 721 million users, and that in the United States the degree of separation was likely between four and five. Of course, the number of users has significantly increased since then, but so will the clusters of connection. My guess is that the degree of separation will have either remained the same or become tighter.
This ties nicely into another bit of research on “deep genealogy”. The numbers now indicate that everyone — everyone — alive today is likely at least a 15th cousin (if you share similar ethnicities), or at most a 50th cousin. While a cousin 50 times removed doesn’t sound like a family relative you might invite over for dinner this weekend, it is an astonishingly close connection.
Here is another way to look at these numbers. If you were lining up at an airport check-in counter and there were 15 people ahead of you, you might grumble, but the line wouldn’t seem interminable. And if you were at an amusement park lining up for a popular ride, 50 people between you and the front of the line wouldn’t be outlandish.
Imagine a vast conga dance line, where you can touch the shoulders of the person in front of you, and in less than fifty (or fifteen!!) connections you could reach anyone on earth.
This genealogical connection is clearly rooted in history, so when someone tells you they are related to Genghis Khan, you might consider believing them. Not only militarily energetic, Genghis Khan had an astonishing number of offspring; recent DNA analysis of haplogroups estimates that as of 2003, 16 million living men were descended from the famed Mongol warrior.
Of course, these notions of genealogical lines of descent (called the “descent from antiquity theory”, which I sometimes caustically refer to as “wishful genealogy”) have many detractors. Still, I think for the most part it is completely plausible given Erdős’ work, not to mention Kevin Bacon.
Dear reader: We are connected more closely and in more ways than we may realize.
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