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# System prepended metadata

title: Reading Responses 3
tags: [CDA]

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###### tags: `CDA`
# Reading Responses 3

## Oct 8 Tues - Social Has a Shape

You may be just five relationships away from meeting Donald Trump. According to Rheingold, all networks have a small average path length between nodes in the network of about five to six relationships. 

In addition, the value of a network can be described using Sarnoff’s, Metcalfe’s, and Reed’s Law. Sarnoff’s Law implies that the value of a network increases arithmetically with the number of receivers, while Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network increases multiplicatively with the number of receivers. For group-forming networks, Reed’s Law says that the value of the network increases exponentially depending on the number of nodes. 

“According to Fowler and Christakis, friends of friends’ friends have about one-third as much influence as people you know directly. The surprising implication is that at least part of your happiness might depend on people you never met.”(Rheingold 2012)

This implies that my friends need to have happy friends in order for me to be happiest. However, the correlation of a friend of my friend's happiness and my happiness could perhaps be due to a third factor, such a hurricane which negatively affects everyone who lives nearby.  

According to Rheingold, we should interact with people who we have weak ties with because they can offer alternative viewpoints and prevent our views from becoming too extreme. This relates to our class discussion about echo chambers and how to escape filter bubbles. To escape filter bubbles, we can force ourselves to interact with sources that provide information that doesn’t appeal to our previously held beliefs in order to gain a more balanced perspective. 

