International standard of famous

[jack]

When thinking about David, the question came up of the most famous piece of art (Mona Lisa?), and how to measure that, and swiftly thence to people. A similar criteria of famousness, say "percentage of people who have heard of", can apply equally well to people, art, and other things.

The obvious suggestion was to normalise between 0.0 and 1.0. It was originally going to be normalised to Jesus at 1.0, but that was probably not complete, so I decided 1.0 should be things known to everyone. That provides some baseline. Say "the sun" is up at 1.0.

I guessed Jesus would be the most famous person (including mythology), being as how people have heard of him all over the world. However, Livredor pointed out that it's quite possible he's not known all over China, and getting 1 biln people in China is a noticeable chunk of that elusive 1.0 score. If you are known to everyone except China, your fame is 0.83 or similar. On the other hand, Chairman Mao has been pretty well known everywhere else; is it possible he actually was more famous than Jesus?

Is there anyone else with a score of 80%+? Real or mythological? You can come up with other concepts in that range. (eg. "Ocean" is known to most adults, but not all. "God" probably doesn't include all small-g gods though.)

Another approach would be to integrate population over time. Jesus, being so widley known for 1000+ years probably beats out anyone mainly known in their own lifetime or own continent. However, he probably also beats out anyone known for N thousand years before that, due to recent explosive population growth.

Another would be to integrate percentage over time. I'm not sure what effect that would have. Anyone from the start of time would be known to everyone, if they could just stay famous long enough, but more recent people may have more staying fame if they do manage to be widely known. Will someone famous for millennia in late BC beat out both?

Comments

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

There are still some completely uncontacted tribes in the world (Survival International estimate there are more than a hundred groups who still reject all attempts at contact, mostly in South America and Papua New Guinea) so I think there probably are no individuals, real or mythological, who will be known to everyone currently alive.

Re your extension of the question to knowledge of concepts (e.g. the Sun), my PhD research involved collecting concept lists which would be known to humans living in any location, at any time since the development of modern humans (and, it is often argued, modern-type language). (I did this by looking for concepts given distinct roots in four reconstructed proto-languages: Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Austronesian, Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Sino-Tibetan.) These were the concepts (represented by their closest English word) which were found across all four proto-languages, which thus provide a decent estimate of the maximum size of such a concept list:

(function words) not over this two three four

(adjectives) big long old other thin

(nouns) blood bone darkness day fire foot head house light liver meat moon nail (on finger) name path/road person salt shoulder sky snake stomach sun tree water

(verbs) to blow to breathe to carry to come to cry to cut to defecate to die to eat to give to go to grind to grow to hide to hit to lie (down) to press to see to sleep to smell (intr.) to split to spread to suck to take to turn to wrap

Just thought this might be of interest!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes, that's really interesting.