Sublime

someone with a great deal of prestige and clout can potentially catalyze an escape from a bad equilibrium.

These are the scales of modern human networks, and it’s Dunbar’s number multiplied by millions. In these large-scale communities, standards and self-governance can’t be maintained by people simply running around and talking to each other. Instead, the builders of these networked products must create features that nudge the interactions in the right

Instead of being a single large community in which favours are exchanged and mutual support given to all, the village becomes subdivided into small factions who don’t trust each other, don’t talk to each other, won’t go to the same parties, and certainly won’t go out of their way to help each other.

three standard deviations’ change is equivalent to saying that a friendship of high strength will decline to no more than a mere acquaintanceship in just three years.

This image had first been conjured by an MIT professor of meteorology, Edward Lorenz, on December 29, 1972, at the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The details were not exactly the same; Lorenz had used the image of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas.82 But the image was

scaling ratio of 3.3.

a depressed friend was six times more likely to make you depressed than a happy friend was to make you happy.