Guilds Mirror Real Life Street Gangs

[Svpernova09]

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/11/30/1358241/Online-Guilds-Mirror-Real-Life-Gangs

Interesting read for those that may not read /.


"In June 2009, Dr Neil Johnson published a paper titled "Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.066117) in Physical Review E (http://pre.aps.org/) that found the way in which WoW "guilds" form can be described by a mathematical model (http://digital.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20091123-181613.html) that can also be applied to an unrelated group of people, namely street gangs in Los Angeles. Since "Any group that satisfies these fairly autonomous, competitive criteria would also (fit the model)," said Dr Johnson, the findings are of interest to though combating international as well as local terrorist cells."

[Fursphere]

Somebody needs smoke this mofo!

Seriously though, what a tool. He should compare the Boyscounts of America before he compares video games.

[Korruptor]

Well then, I guess every structured group (businesses, schools, governments, military, religions) could resemble a gang.

This guy missed the fact that in order to be successfully at anything a group of people need to be organized to achieve a goal.

This is a good example of another group of "intellects " drunk on their own egos.

[Marious]

Well then, I guess every structured group (businesses, schools, governments, military, religions) could resemble a gang.

This guy missed the fact that in order to be successfully at anything a group of people need to be organized to achieve a goal.

This is a good example of another group of "intellects " drunk on their own egos.

Well yeah that's why gangs stay in business there a:


group of people need to be organized to achieve a goal.

I dont know why they just dont change the name to Gang instead of Guild... I mean come on....

[Fursphere]

Just another (obvious and sad) attempt to make video games the bad guys.

[Flekkie]

Thanks Svper, good read. It makes a lot of sense to me, I have thought this to mysef in the past. He talks about two groups with negative associations (gangs and terrorist cells), but I would go further and say that any group where you can choose membership/apply should probably have some common dynamic. Think about school/uni clubs, sports fans, how they react/feel when a member doesn't conform, how they choose their compatriots.

Not sure how insulting him helps; anyone who can accurately model a group dynamic has pretty strong grounds imo.
Also, I myself have experienced 'gang' type situations in larger offices, where a department gets into a silo mentality, you have to play football on thurs nights to be 'one of the boys', all that, so I do not dismiss it on those grounds either.

WoW would be a very convenient way to pose as a member and study such a group. Respectfully; to dismiss the opportunity because of the computer game format would be as blinkered as some of the posts I have just read, and more on par with the WoW boards than these imo.


Ah hah ha.. did you see the first few comments on the article?
Need crazy bomber - PST stats & achievement (no noobs)A bit sick, but lol!


And this: http://xkcd.com/435/

[Velassra]

So.....how do multiboxers fit into this group?

I mean, afterall, we just like to play w/ ourselves....

[Ualaa]

Pull your kids out of school.
After all there is organization for a goal, which means its a gang.

Pretty funny thread, actually.

[RobinGBrown]

Seriously, the attitude here says it all. Of course guilds are like street gangs, that explains exactly why they're not fun.

Multiboxers = wannabe gangstas.

[Khatovar]

Multiboxers = wannabe gangstas.

Nah. Multi-boxers = wannabe cult leaders/separatists :eek:

[EaTCarbS]

I loled IRL

[Fursphere]

Seriously, the attitude here says it all. Of course guilds are like street gangs, that explains exactly why they're not fun.

Multiboxers = wannabe gangstas.

You must be doing it wrong.

[Vicker]

Have any of you bothered to read the actual journal article, rather than Slashdot's reaction to it?

The article is in a physics journal. Physicists seek to find general models that fit a wide range of systems. In this case, he chose gangs and online guilds because he viewed them as two very different systems, thus showing that his model is robust.

The mathematical equations that govern a spring are very similar to those for the force exerted between two atoms in a chemical bond. Does this mean that physicists think that atoms are actually held together by little tiny springs? No.

One physical model for electrical current flowing through a metal is the same as a model for a herd of buffalo running through an open plain. Does this mean that physicists think that electrons are the same thing as buffalo? No.

Perhaps you should read the journal article before you start insulting the author.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Seriously, the attitude here says it all. Of course guilds are like street gangs, that explains exactly why they're not fun.

Multiboxers = wannabe gangstas.
Wannabe? I will straight roll up in hur and pop a cap in yo ass. Betta yet, yo, I will have my BOYS roll gat on yo whole family, you jiggy?

<--- see icon

[thinus]

Have any of you bothered to read the actual journal article, rather than Slashdot's reaction to it?

The article is in a physics journal. Physicists seek to find general models that fit a wide range of systems. In this case, he chose gangs and online guilds because he viewed them as two very different systems, thus showing that his model is robust.

The mathematical equations that govern a spring are very similar to those for the force exerted between two atoms in a chemical bond. Does this mean that physicists think that atoms are actually held together by little tiny springs? No.

One physical model for electrical current flowing through a metal is the same as a model for a herd of buffalo running through an open plain. Does this mean that physicists think that electrons are the same thing as buffalo? No.

Perhaps you should read the journal article before you start insulting the author.

Yeah, I think people hear the words "guild" and "gang" and they knee jerk in response.

The paper itself seems like it is only available for purchase. It is difficult to gauge exactly what he is modelling from the article only.


Quantifying human group dynamics represents a unique challenge. Unlike animals and other biological systems, humans form groups in both real (offline) and virtual (online) spaces—from potentially dangerous street gangs populated mostly by disaffected male youths to the massive global guilds in online role-playing games for which membership currently exceeds tens of millions of people from all possible backgrounds, age groups, and genders. We have compiled and analyzed data for these two seemingly unrelated offline and online human activities and have uncovered an unexpected quantitative link between them. Although their overall dynamics differ visibly, we find that a common team-based model can accurately reproduce the quantitative features of each simply by adjusting the average tolerance level and attribute range for each population. By contrast, we find no evidence to support a version of the model based on like-seeking-like (i.e., kinship or “homophily”).

So the part I don't really get is:

a common team-based model can accurately reproduce the quantitative features of each simply by adjusting the average tolerance level and attribute range

What are the quantitative features?
What are the attributes?

The article is too sketchy to really understand anything.

The interesting part is:

By contrast, we find no evidence to support a version of the model based on like-seeking-like (i.e., kinship or “homophily”).

So how do race specific gangs fit into their model then?

[Stealthy]

One of the replies to the article had a link to a free download - http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0812.2299

This reply neatly sums up the paper:


The authors are interested in the underlying social mechanism that drives group formation.
They compare two competing theories -- homophily or that like attracts like, and a theory that group formation is driven by a search for compliments -- and conclude that the latter drives group formation in *both* gangs and guilds.

In the paper, they then go on to apply a mathematical model to the formation of groups.

I thought this discussion around the physics aspect of the paper quite interesting (note - the authors are physics grad students):


The results are often somewhat unfortunate; but there is an entire genre of papers, across a variety of subjects, generated by physicists' belief that, as long as they can develop a mathematical model, they can write on just about anything. There is a similar behavior in economists, who figure that, if they can assign dollar values to the major variables, they are on safe ground.

Sometimes the results are genuinely interesting, or even downright superior, if the area has been bogged down in excessive qualitative handwaving. Other times, you get breathtaking exercises in over-reduction, ignorant of a variety of messy details that have been common knowledge, among people who actually study the subject, for decades.


And this:



Thomas Nagel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel) [wikipedia.org] famously argued against the reductionist approach of physics and other "hard science" disciplines in his paper "What is it like to be a bat? (http://www.clarku.edu/students/philosophyclub/docs/nagel.pdf) [clarku.edu]". A rough summary of the paper is that he thinks science may be able to tell us how something works, like the echolocation abilities of a bat, but it's much harder to give an account for how it's like to actually experience something, like what echolocation actually feels like.
This is all by way of saying that you're spot on. Reductionist approaches are problematic and have widely known to be problematic for at least decades if not longer. This is not to say that reductionism is necessarily wrong - it could be the case that if we know everything physical about the world, we will know everything about the world - but it seems less and less likely to those who are not in the "hard sciences". Psychology and Neuroscience remain two distinct disciplines. You can't tell sociological phenomena simply by observing and describing in physical terms physical phenomena. And etc.
This may be an example of the latter. The sociological phenomena of groups have been well-studied by sociologists and psychologists, and we do have quite extensive explanations of group and social dynamics from these disciplines. Yet here, some physics students come in and try to study what has been studied and come to some questionable conclusions that seem to be problematic if examined from a sociological or psychological perspective (as pointed out by GP).



And finally this:



I think of the issue as: reductionism is right, but useless. Unless we can combine the countless calculations that describe the basic physical properties of some system with enough accuracy and detail to model its emergent behavior, then we cannot develop an improved understanding of that system through reductionist means. (Which incidentally is why strong AI is never going to happen.)
Or, a Monet is just a bunch of dried oily goo on some canvas, but it's much more productive to understand it by looking at it than by precisely describing the goo with equations. And one would need to appeal to an entirely different field (cognitive neuroscience) to explain the psychology of the historical context motivating the artist; and thus the art historian's approach manages to synthesize two enormous scientific fields without even needing any math...


And there was another reply with links to these interseting articles, which are kind of related:



You might be interested: Robber's Cave Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber's_Cave_Experiment) [wikipedia.org]
Another (not a scientific) study: The Third Wave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave) [wikipedia.org]



All up I found the paper and some of the discussions afterwards made for interesting (and thought provoking) reading.

Cheers,
S.

[Khatovar]

Have any of you bothered to read the actual journal article, rather than Slashdot's reaction to it?.

I'd care, but this is not the first time people have thrown around the MMO Gangs "comparison" (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=26294), and it won't be the last. Hell, I think I saw it on an episode of Numb3rs, too. It's amusing, like how hot girls don't play video games and we're all 500lb basement-dwelling virgins. Now we can totally be that Weird Al video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqz1ojIQTBk)

[thinus]

So if I understand correctly, their model works like this:


Agents represent people. Each agent has an attribute value and a tolerance value, |--A--| with A being the attribute and the tolerance applied either side.
Groups are a collection of agents and contain all the attributes of all agents in the group.
An agent will apply to join a group if the agent's attribute seems like it would compliment the group based on the average attribute of the group.
A group will accept an agent based on the fraction of attributes in the group overlapping the applicant's attribute and the group tolerance.
Once an agent becomes part of a group the agent may decide to leave the group if there is too much overlap with other agent attributes.
An agent may also switch teams if it finds a team where the agent's attributes overlap less.

Then the model deals with some other stuff as well.
If the membership of the majority of WoW guilds are determined by filling raid roles then it makes sense that the model will fit with WoW guilds. In WoW I assume the majority of guilds are balanced around raiding to some extent, in other words new members are recruited to fill raid requirements and leaving members are ones that want to raid but don't have a raid spot or find a better guild for them. Sure social and leveling guilds will have different patterns but which is the majority?

But why does it fit with street gangs? In WoW guilds are constrained in size to a certain extent due to raid instance size and roles / attributes will probably be weighted heavily by class / spec. What are the roles / attributes for street gangs and why do their membership patterns follow the model? Are the attributes more related to personality traits or skills? Just one complete psycho per gang...? Or is it just one arsonist?

Can it be linked to a need for appreciation/approval? Being the best tank in the guild, best healer, best DPS, etc.This makes more sense from a gang perspective as well.

[Fursphere]

Street gangs gives him street cred of course.

[RobinGBrown]

I'm an outsider on this, there's a reason why I don't join guilds (or street gangs), which is that the intricate web of rigid social interactions in both cultures are constrictive and unpleasant.

Alice is in a guild, Bob is the main healer of the guild and he's a complete asshat. Alice has to give the best loot to Bob because Carl will throw her out of the guild if she doesn't.
Arnold is in a gang, Bob is the main dealer of the gang and he's a complete mofo. Arnold has to carry Bob's stash because Carl will pop a cap in his ass if he doesn't.

Forcing people to act in a certain way 'for the good of the guild/because he's a brother' is what I find repugnant about those tight social groupings.

So yes, I think that the comparison can easily be made between guilds, street gangs, or any other tight social group with enforced behaviour constraints - e.g. the military, prisons, etc. It always seems to be the same type of people you see in those groups.

[moosejaw]

I'd care, but this is not the first time people have thrown around the MMO Gangs "comparison" (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=26294), and it won't be the last. Hell, I think I saw it on an episode of Numb3rs, too. It's amusing, like how hot girls don't play video games and we're all 500lb basement-dwelling virgins. Now we can totally be that Weird Al video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqz1ojIQTBk)

I don' t even have to click the Weird Al link to know.... I'm fat, I'm fat, Shamoo!!

[Naysayer]

Some of the dumbest shit i've ever read.

[Owltoid]

Some of the dumbest shit i've ever read.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/search.php?searchid=581627

[Marious]

Well if you want to go as far as comparing stuff like that, then we can make a simple comparison between members of lets say myspace or facebook.... do you get what I am saying? Not making fun or anything of the students I could care less. And yeah I think this was a Numb3rs episode or something too hehe.

[RobinGBrown]

http://www.dual-boxing.com/search.php?searchid=581627

= 'Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.'

[RobinGBrown]

Saw something interesting on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

[Vicker]

Saw something interesting on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

I can think of a rather prominent nation that is displaying many symptoms of groupthink.