Nodes

Node is an informationally interactive entity i.e it can collect, store, distribute, process, generate information. Nodes can be an individual human, organization. Non-human entities such as search engines, books, AI and, websites etc. non-human are managed by humans hence, susceptible to influence from their biases.

Social Rank of a node is quantized representation of its social status expressing influentiality. For now we’ll limit nodes to just two ranks- high and low. It tells us how likely are other nodes to receive and believe that information.

Ranks of node

Discoverability/Visibility: This denotes how accessible, visible a node is to agent nodes (humans).

Intrusivity/Talkativity: This denotes intensity at which a node propagates information to other nodes even without incoming request.

In case of receiver human node, information perception is subject to cognitive biases (identity, association), perceived social rank of the distributor node.

For now we’ll generalize node ranks as high and low.

High rank node: Human nodes such as individuals within power structures- political leaders, actors/actresses. Non-human entities such as search engines, AIs, websites, news agencies etc. These nodes are capable of overriding information towards low rank nodes.

Low rank nodes: Large populations/common people.

Edges/links (Node proximity)

Edges or links between the nodes shows the connectivity. Since we are looking at the human society as an information system the edge weight/strength denotes how nodes are likely to exchange information. In case of epidemiology which is study of spread of viruses and diseases, using geolocational proximity for edges makes sense. Connectivity can be unidirectional or bidirectional. e.g. two friends sharing info, chatting, influencing each other’s thoughts is bidirectional. Large populations following specific high rank node (celebrity) is unidirectional.

Social Truth

One of the way to look at our minds that it works like a statistical model. Information we receive, things we observe again and again reinforces itself in our minds regardless of its factuality.

In graph terminology, number of nodes that refers to or distribute a particular statement or information, regardless of whether that statement is factually true, false or partial. A higher degree of social reference weight causes informational & normative social influence towards other informationally close proximity nodes, leading to self-sustained growth, persistence of the information and becoming a social truth.

Example partial or false social truths - “Vikings wore horned helmets.”, “Columbus discovered America”, “Dinosaur looked grey and scaly”, “Nazi symbol is called swastik”. These statements are part of people’s belief system since they were propagated by high-rank nodes such as films, education systems, TV/news, internet, personalities etc. whose functioning is mostly black box for large populations.

Social truths are not inherently harmful. They have been integral part of human civilization and significant factor for sustainability of social system e.g. cultural beliefs, faiths. Ideally cultural beliefs should be simplified extensions of actuality or supportive to it. Simplicity is what makes particular information capable of becoming a social truth. Too much drift from actuality deteriorates social health.

Ability to classify information as social truth allows us to analyze its effect in social, political dynamics in comparison with actual truths/ideal reality. Things quickly get complicated when we bring in various identities and distribution of social truths among them.