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Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is no more than six "steps" away from each person on Earth.
I'm not sure of the scientific validity of this...(it's been around for decades). I suppose it COULD be true...maybe even with only FIVE degrees.
I'm sure it's very much 'uneven', and that well-connected, well-traveled people from developed nations probably have TONS of connections they aren't even aware of.
The problem would come with extremely isolated folks...jungle tribes, residents of remote islands, etc. But even THERE, all it would take is ONE visitor, who would "meet" the locals, then return home...where he'd "know" others, each of whom would know others, and so on...
It MAY be possible that only FOUR degrees of separation might include everyone on earth...but again, it would be wildly uneven....and impossible to prove..
In genealogy the sixth degree would be the seventh generation. They've been dead for two hundred years. On the other hand, a 6th degree black belt might be a great freied to know. I think the 6th degree theory is more likely to be apt in a small town where adults went to the same schools, I suppose it could happen at the county fair or club where members share the same passion. And maybe even at a country club in a large metropolitan area like Chicago. I did not mention soclial agencies that share information about clients.
But, on the other hand, I think it very unlikely if I was in Chicago visiting I would meet someone who knows by child who lives in Houston. In fact, I'd bet no one in the entire C-D forum knows her except an ex-husband or co-workers, and there is no way of knowing if any of them are in fact members here. Maybe the six degrees of separation works somewhere else, but it don't work in my world.
That is based on the principle that if you know 100 people, they will have 100x100=10,000 acquaintances, and through six steps, the number of acquaintances fans out to become one with 12 zeroes, or one trillion. Even five degrees would work, producing ten billion, but allowance has to be made for the fact that your 100 friends, probably have a lot of duplication among their friends, so would not really be 10,000 different people. So six degrees is presumed to take care of provincial duplication.
I don't know about knowing everyone on earth, but I get a kick out of the fact that in my state, when I meet someone and we talk long enough, we quite often find that we have at least one friend in common. I like that.
One of the experiments started in a small town and people were to send letters to a man in Boston. The individuals were to mail the letters to whoever they felt might best get the letter to the man in Boston. After the man in Boston opened up all the letters he found a coincidence, that the 5th connection to most was the same individual. This individual was a connector. In fact if I have 100 friends, you may have 1000, this connector had 10s of thousands of friends. The degrees of variation comes down to these connectors and though it is generally the case, for every case there are exceptions, such as tribes in Papua New Guinea who have little communication with the known world. So yes the theory of six degrees of seperation is not improbable yet it does not explain everything.
Among residents of first world countries. Absolutely. Look at it this way.
I know my boss. He knows knows the congressman. He knows the president. The president knows the leader of some random 1st world country... etc
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