Thresholds - tipping points in people

The topic of thresholds came up a few times over the past few weeks in my conversations about a number of different topics, and I thought it was pretty interesting, since every time I hear the word threshold, I think of Vt - the threshold voltage for a CMOS to switch from 0 to 1 or vice-versa. Those who have ever take circuits at MIT would understand why - Vt is your life.

Beyond being totally geeky though, it has been interesting to see that there are many other places in which under a certain level nothing happens, but just a little more passes the "tipping point", and then things abruptly change.

One of the discussions that continues to resurface arises whenever we talk about comparative government. Europeans are very passionate about personal freedoms and rights, seemingly even more so than Americans. In part, as the Swiss would have you believe, because they have a "truer" democracy than the US and so the system is more functional, and in part because, talking to the Eastern Europeans, having lived under oppression and restrictions, the alternative is quite horrid.

On the other side of the spectrum are folks from China and jaded Americans like myself who are willing to see a compromise in personal freedom in order for more sustainable and hopefully more socially optimal growth. Now one of course would hope that the two are not mutually exclusive, and perhaps you could argue that India has both. However, having experienced India first hand, I would say that the perception is that they have both, but the reality is that they don't really have either today.

So then the question arises - is it inevitable that the desire for greater personal freedom will eventually surpass a planned governments' ability to control it? Or are people willing to indefinitely live with a compromise as long as their other needs are met?

Personally it seems like there's a threshold that people are willing to tolerate, and as long as the government operates below that threshold, it can continue indefinitely. Take the US right now. Although around 65% of Americans oppose the war, the troops are still there. Now this tells me two things - one, that America is not a true democracy since clearly the majority is not getting its way; two, that perhaps because most of the needs of the people are met, eventhough the government has made a debacle of Iraq, been tainted with bribery, violated the Geneva conventions and the Bill of Rights, people just don't care enough to revolt and get rid of the current regime.

So now transplant this same attitude to places like China and Singapore. Yes they censor the media and have greater restrictions on personal freedom, but is that really that bad if they are able to increase the general standard of living and provide for its citizens? For China, there is a very real problem with figuring out how to keep a population more than 4 times the US clothed, feed, and healthy - let alone happy. And that's with a GDP that's less than a 5th the size. Now's that's an interesting problem to solve.

Sidenote: I thought this chart was pretty cool:

Any way, I just think it's really interesting to note that people, like transistors, have a threshold in which they abruptly switch from one state to another. I guess in some sense, that's why sometimes people snap. They've been operating just under the threshold and even the most miniscule thing might put them over the top... scary...