Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?

From: Lawrence de Bivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 13 2001 - 04:28:52 GMT

  • Next message: Joe E. Dees: "Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?" 

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From: "Lawrence de Bivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
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Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:28:52 -0500
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    From: Mark Mills

    SNIP

    > On field work, here is an example I came across recently:
    >
    > http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cond-mat/0101172
    > Title: Distribution of Traffic Penalties in Rio de Janeiro
    >
    > This study found that roughly 20% of Rio drivers got 80% of the
    > tickets. The distribution followed Pareto-Zipf's law (power-law
    > distribution). Everyone has equal access to the traffic laws, especially
    > after getting a ticket, why not something more like a normal distribution
    > for getting tickets?
    >
    > I also came across an article about word usage and power-laws:
    > http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Abstracts/00-12-068abs.html
    > Title:Two Regimes in the Frequency of Words and the Origins
    > of Complex Lexicons:Zipf's Law Revisited
    >
    > Why do traffic tickets in Rio have a similar frequency distribution to
    word
    > usage? I think something neural memetic is going on. Lawrence mentioned
    > 'ethics' a few messages ago, maybe word usage and ethical driving are
    > linked by Zipf's laws?

    Can you say a bit more about what you are thinking about here, Mark? How
    would ethics be connected to the 80/20 ratio? Are you suggeting that 80% of
    the people adhere to 20% of the ethical choices?

    Might this suggest that only 20% of memes are going to be successful?
    Interesting.

    - Lawrence

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