The newsletter by , originally tweeted out by , shows rise of concentration and franchises over time, but I bet if you plotted it relative to the number of new 🎥🎶📚🕹️ per year, the effect would be even clearer.
Conversation
Why do bigger fields have this pathology? I think the key idea is that across 🧪🎥🎶📚🕹️ there are important network effects. You want to do science related to other people's work, and communally enjoy movies, music, books, and video games.
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How do people coordinate on what to give attention?
/Chu argue when the flow of new papers is small, people can sample and top hits emerge via a gradual process of preferential attachment. But when scientific fields get too big, this dynamic no longer works.
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This figure is the median time until a paper enters the top 0.1% most cited (vertical axis) against the size of the field (horizontal). Note small fields can slowly build up steam, and take a long time to reach top 0.1%. But in big fields, it's more instant fame or bust.
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Why doesn't gradual accumulation of citations work for big fields? They argue something new comes along too fast for you to build momentum. In big fields, you either make a splash instantly (a favorable write up in NYT? Twitter vitality?) or people move on to the next thing.
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I suspect the same dynamic underlies pathologies in popular culture, with a bit of a twist. First, given the avalanche of new stuff, it's very hard to slow-burn your way to the top. You go viral or flop; there are too many other good options available and people lose interest.
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In an environment of superabundant choice, consumers are too fragmented for network effects to reliably emerge via organic consensus building, at least before something new comes along and distracts people away.
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But big content producers know this and optimize for it. Quality never hurts, but rather than a strategy of making the highest quality art, for commercial producers a better strategy is to focus on projects that can garner outsized attention (franchises) among more competition.
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So it's not that we're running out of ideas; we have more than ever! But that very fact is also a curse that means the most popular stuff looks less and less creative.
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What's the solution? I'm not sure. As a first step, the economist in me cries out for a formal model of this process.
Maybe there is one out there already, but since it's not in the top 0.1% most cited, it's buried out there in the avalanche of papers, doomed never to be found.
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Replying to
Looks like it’s building up to a phase transition. One big connected component in the citation graph or pop culture authorship/sequel graph.

