söndag 10 januari 2016

What Makes People March in Step?


The Secret of the Piano exhibits a basic resonance phenomenon where the vibrations of a collection of strings are kept in phase by all having a phase shift of half a period vs a soundboard in a "breathing" interaction between strings and soundboard with the strings moving "in" when the soundboard goes "out" and vice versa. The collection of strings and the soundboard thus take "opposite positions".

This phenomenon may also be seen in the interaction between human beings in a society, where a collection of people "march in step" e.g by sharing certain political views, and one may ask how this coordination comes about:
  1.  Is it the idea of a leader that is adopted and followed?
  2.  Is it a common "enemy" as the opposite of a leader, which unites people? 
The lesson from the piano suggests 2, the reason being that in this case there is massive energy exchange between strings and soundboard back-and-forth allowing coordination to occur. On the other hand, when strings and soundboard vibrate in phase and then without energy exchange, there is no correction mechanism and strings and soundboard will quickly go out-of-phase. 

Similarly, one may expect that "negative leadership" may be more effective than "positive leadership", because taking opposite views involves massive exchange of energy thus allowing correction to occur, while agreeing can be effortless without corrective measure. 

This observation may connect to my experience of many times ending up with the opposite view of a group of people all marching in step and with a lot of energy mobilized on both parts.      

2 kommentarer:

  1. Group think seems to amplify absurdities to the extreme without (new) external impulses, e.g. climate alarmism.

    SvaraRadera
  2. Maybe in this case it is the common enemy of upcoming disaster which unites people, rather than a common understanding that this is based on rational ground.

    SvaraRadera