Noises, the dampening factor

It all started with one of my friends claiming that old melodies are still lively for all they are worth and that the present day music simply does not compare with the music of 60s or 70s. He went further concluding that the new songs have a "short Ear-life" as compared to the older classics because present day music has something seriously lacking.

Not that I don't love the old melodies, which are dear to me and they have the same soothing and cathartic influence on me as on most of us. But do we attribute the "short Ear life" of present day music to sloppy work done by our present day artists.

But a little thinking would reveal that it is not the complete story? How do we account for following occurrences?

The great depression of 1930s had a massive impact lasting several years and it took two US presidential tenures to restore the economy to its original health.Why did we have a typically such a long business cycle in yesteryears. The world witnessed a massive stock market crash in 2001 and the markets began to respond positively the very next year. Is it equally true that depressions earlier were the greatest ever? While it is beyond doubt that depression of 30s was a major one and it dwarfs present day's crises, it is equally true that present economic system is both more prone and resilient to all the crest and troughs of business cycles. Present day boom and busts have a shorter life too.

Here's second instance of difference between then and now.

Leaders like MK Gandhi, Lenin, Churchill impacted lives of millions of people and remained iconic throughout their life. Why do we not have leaders with such huge following these days. Today we have a bunch of professionals, who are trained in behavioural sciences, have more sophisticated speaking abilities and enjoy more media coverage to market themselves, but they fail to click. Are leaders of today as ineffective as today's music. Today's leaders have short intervals of fame and fade away into oblivion once the media decides to turn its energies on something more newsworthy..

Why do the bestsellers today have very short duration of iconic popularity? Are authors of today also slowly decaying or they do not match the originality of the classics?

Or do we wonder why in the highly networked world of today, where all information is at fingertips, being creative is more challenging than ever. In no time a really cool idea becomes bland, a witty wisecrack becomes obsolete cliche very quickly.

How do we account for all the above phenomena?

Let’s connect the rather seemingly unrelated dots and interpret these phenomena.

First lets define the key terms in the the discussion. For brevity let’s use term "pattern" to describe some recurring phenomenon. The pattern is then said to recur over a sample space, which is sum of pattern itself and a large non-recurring theme, which for brevity lets name it "noise".

A pattern is distinct or stands out only if searching for the pattern is relatively easier in its sample space. The noise essentially impairs this searching by increasing the sample space, making the pattern less discernible. Yes, by now as most of you have guessed, I blame Entropy (noise) for all above mentioned effects.

Why do we have increased noise?

Human progress, both in number (population) and the increased complexity of living has resulted in exponential growth of noise.

We have greater number of singers and more music is produced than ever. Also we have easier access to music. No wonder a really rocking-happening song turns bland in matter of days.

Increasingly complex economy which resulted from globalization and use of technologies has made the business cycles short. Our boom and bust phases (business cycles) are short. Gone are the days when we will see increased sustained growth for decades. Also gone are the days when man and his government will toil for decades to endure a bad phase. The reasons for shorter cycles are increased business activity and increased sophistication in the way business is transacted. We have ideas that are cool make billions in a few months and we see giants collapse in short span. Alarming is the growth of noise in business sphere too.

Leaders have an uphill task these days to have increased following as the dissension creeps in easily. It is not difficult to explain that unbridled reign and brute majority is secured by a government only in those places where noise is less. By less noise in political sphere I mean a weak ineffective opposition, low penetration of media or a repressed society all of which sum to give less political activities and hence less political noise. In mature democracies people mostly have mixed opinions.

People have increased access to books, ideas and information. The data generated these days is more than ever and is still increasing at an exponential rate, and social networking sites have had only a multiplier effect. A witty or a serious thought-provoking idea is only seconds away before a social networking site makes it so public so as to be unoriginal.

Same applies to the book authors who have to battle to maintain the creative space and be original and popular.

I have not much fair idea how much maths is used in social sciences. however a persuasive argument can be built as follows.

The term derangement in combinatorial maths refers to number of ways you could place an object in incorrect position, which is essentially the noise. The derangement function grows very fast with increase in number of objects (factorial function). When we increase the sample space we are blurring the pattern very rapidly.