First Short Quiz - Overview of The Human Network

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johnkarls
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First Short Quiz - Overview of The Human Network

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1. Does a child born in Pakistan have a better chance of escaping poverty than an American child born in poverty?

2. Does the U.S. even have double the immobility of, for example, Canada?

3. Nevertheless, do studies show that Americans’ perceptions of mobility are radically different than reality?

4. Has our author, Prof. Jackson, been studying human networks for a quarter century?

5. What is “homophily”?

6. Is “homophily” racist if it is defined as “the general tendency of people to interact with others who are similar to themselves”?

7. In other words, segregation based on such matters as gender, ethnicity, religion, age, profession, educational level, etc.?

8. Did Prof. Jackson discover that “homophily” exists among hunter-gatherers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley – based on such matters as height, weight and strength?

9. Do you think that such “homophily” represents nothing more than human selfishness to leave behind anyone who is not “pulling her/his own weight”? With those left behind by the top group exhibiting the same human selfishness in leaving behind anyone abandoned by the top group who is not “pulling her/his own weight” in the second-best group?

10. BTW, did we discover years ago that Asian societies typically expect their older members to commit suicide when they “have become a burden” to the group? That honor is all-important and committing suicide in such circumstances is the honorable thing to do?

11. If, per Q-9, “homophily” is nothing more than human selfishness causing segregation into groups of similar ability, does it remind you of “Lord of the Flies” – a chilling 1954 novel by William Goldring that was made into two Hollywood movies by the same name in 1963 and 1990 – a novel that we probably all read back in high school?

12. Was “Lord of the Flies” about a group of British upper-class boarding-school boys who are stranded on a deserted island after their airplane crashes killing all of the adults? Do the boys quickly organize themselves into separate homophilic groups? Do the separate groups actually commit torture and murder against members of other groups? And is one boy being hunted by another group with the intention of killing and, perhaps, eating him? Are the boys rescued by adults just “in the nick of time” so that we are spared the question of whether they would have actually engaged in cannibalism? While having the point driven home that “civilization” is only a thin veneer that is easily lost?

13. Did William Goldring win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today” (quotation from the Nobel Prize citation)?

14. Did Prof. Jackson discover in studying pairs of homophilic groups that destructive behavior can easily cascade in one group without affecting the other if there are few connections between the two groups? While adding only a few connections between the two groups can prevent the destructive behavior from cascading in either group? Is this an argument for integration?

15. As technology enables us to choose our relationships from a much larger pool and homophily encourages us to search far and wide for those most like ourselves, are we eroding the local clustering that is crucial to community health and equality of opportunity?

16. Putting aside Prof. Jackson’s network theories as they operate in other societies including hunter-gatherer societies in Africa, are Americans even more likely to form homophilic groups because, as we have studied in recent months, K-12 school districts in America are financed primarily by local property taxes and parents “try to do the best they can by their own children” by purchasing a home in the best area with the best school system that they can afford?

17. Does all of Prof. Jackson’s work result in any “silver bullet” recommendations for solving societal ills resulting from homophily/segregation?

18. Or does Professor Jackson concede that “making dramatic changes in people’s networks is likely a losing battle” – pointing out that “large-scale social engineering has a history of disasters” and offering only a handful of modest suggestions?

19. Can you think of ways to make dramatic changes in people’s networks that would be successful?

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