Is It True?

You’ve received e-mails from friends and family that make you wonder if it’s really true! Sometimes these e-mails relate to monstrous atrocities being planned by the government or maybe the heart-warming treacle of a light bit of entertainment couched as a “true story”!

Either way it’s important to know, when you first start to get into the e-mail what the likelihood is that it’s true!

Behold the E-Mail Veracity Equation! (Thanks in large part to a friend (Dr. W.) for the core of the equation.)

P_t is the probability that the e-mail contains a true story

N_f = number of times it has been forwarded (just count the number of forwards, not the number of people to whom it has been forwarded)

F = Font size (points)

C = 1 if it is any font other than “comic sans seriff”, 2 if it is comic sans seriff

Now it’s a quick matter of figuring out what the likelihood is that the e-mail you are investing your time and heart into is actually true!

Religious Acceptance Function

Any given religion becomes more accepted the older it gets. I propose a model for this called the Religious Acceptance Function (Ra) which is a function of time.

Ideally the longer a religious “meme” has been around the more “accepted” it is. Probably because as time goes on there are fewer people around to tell the details about how or why the original “religion” was founded. In addition as an idea exists in a community for a length of time the more “comfortable” it feels.

Ra = Acceptance rate of a given religion as a function of time

k = “religiosity” of population (how prone are they to accepting a religious proposition)

O = “Outlandishness of claims” (barrier to acceptance of a religious claim)

In this model the acceptance rate is the relative portion of a given population exposed to given religious claim (a “new religion”) that accepts the religion as either acceptable or one they practice.

K is defined as the “religiosity” factor. However religious population is will help define how effective a new religion will take hold and become accepted. If the population is largely irreligious no new religion will be readily accepted.

O is the “outlandishness” factor which is, simply put, how outlandish a religious claim is and represents a barrier to acceptance and adoption of the new religion. As O is decreased adoption and acceptance is hastened.

Ultimately the point at which a religious concept is accepted is the "propensity level" or the baseline level for that that society to accept any given religion.

The following figure is a rough example of this in action.