Thursday 20th of March 2003, 19:15
Inconvenient Protest
The problem with popular ideas is their own popularity. Though there may be good reasons for an idea’s initial broad appeal, its popularity can increase by leaps by feeding back onto itself. A critical mass is soon achieved, and subsequently the good reasons fade into oblivion, the idea becomes an end in itself, and it is supported thoughtlessly.
I am writing this because a pacifist demonstration stopped traffic in the middle of Bath, forcing me to walk home carrying my heavy shopping.
Comments
Your proposition’s validity is locally bounded. In the medium to long term, the popularity of ideas may be a self-destructive property, in the way popularity of behaviour is (eg. walking on one side of the pavement, or other sorts of non-equilibrium behaviour). Your reaction is such an emerging force. You will need a more apt evolutionary model to qualify the nature and effects of popularity.
Also, note that if pacifist demonstrations were even more popular, to the degree of becoming the norm, the circumstances that gave rise to your present frustration would have already been accomodated frustationlessly by your adaptive behaviour.
Thus perhaps the idea needs to shift from the level of popularity to changes in popularity; which ultimately has little to do with the properties of popularity and more to do with behavioural inertia and adaptational costs.