The Mathematician Who Proved Why Hipsters All Look Alike
13th November 2014
Jonathan Touboul is a mathematician and a neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in math from France’s prestigious École Polytechnique, where he won a prize for his thesis on how to simulate neurons in the brain. He publishes papers with titles like “Pulsatile localized dynamics in delayed neural-field equations in arbitrary dimension” and “The propagation of chaos in neural fields.”
Recently, though, Touboul has been thinking about hipsters. Specifically, why hipsters all seem to dress alike. In his line of work, there are neurons that also behave like hipsters. They fire when every neuron around them is quiet; or they fall silent when every neuron around them is chattering.
Because he is a mathematician, Touboul began to look for a way to explore this idea using equations. In other words, he constructed a mathematical model. His key insight is that people (and neurons) do not instantly perceive what is mainstream. There’s a delay. And in situations where the delay is large enough, the contrarians can inadvertently synchronize with each other.
“In wanting to oppose the trends, there actually emerges some sort of hipster loop,” Touboul said.
November 13th, 2014 at 11:24
Why do hipsters all dress alike? Because otherwise how would you know they’re hipsters?
If what you’re asking is how people decide what they find attractive (in this case an alleged counterculture), that might be useful.
November 13th, 2014 at 17:22
I’m convinced that it’s more about trying to be In With The In Crowd than what people find attractive.