The Mandelbrot Set

Within the idea of media bias is the idea of memes and the influence of information. Each of us, for instance, had to have heard of each of the presidential candidates from some source of information. Let's assume, for the sake of simplicity, that we learned about each of the candidates from a media source. We can also assume that every media source is biased to some degree and seeks to spread one or more memes in relation to the candidates. Thus, we have learned of the candidates, we have been infected with one or more memes, and we now have our preference.

Polls are a measure of the success or failure of one or more memes gaining influence on our preference for president in the upcoming election. Polls taken over the course of the presidential campaign show the patterns of our attitudes over time. Therefore, it must be possible to predict with certainty who will win the election. For even if we factor in possible last minute information, at this point in the process, "new" information does not have enough time to change the outcome of the election because the pattern of the polls cannot change. Why? For the same reason a "healthy" or "normal" elm tree cannot suddenly shoot a new branch straight down to the ground. There is a pattern to which the tree must abide. The tree, like voters and the memes they carry, follow a simple and elegant formula: the Mandelbrot set.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractal geometry, and several others were using simple iterative equations to explore the behavior of numbers on the complex plane. [Read an interview with Mandelbrot.] A very simple way to view the operation of an iterative equation is as follows:

changing number+fixed number=result

Start with one of the numbers on the complex plane and put its value in the "Fixed Number" slot of the equation. In the "Changing Number" slot put zero. Now calculate the equation, take the "Result," and slip it into the "Changing Number" slot. Repeat the whole operation again (in other words, recalculate and "iterate" the equation) and watch what happens to the "Result." Does it hover around a fixed value, does it spiral toward infinity quickly, or does it stagger upward by a slower expansion?

Simple enough, right? Polls contain the numbers representing attitudes and voting intentions. Fortunately, like the elm tree, the presidential election is a finite process; that is, the process will end as the elm tree eventually stops growing and thus ends the pattern it has adhered to. This brings us to the "strange attractor":

Applying zoom-ins and different iterative prisms to the numbers in the boundary area of the Mandelbrot set has revealed that this region is a mathematical strange attractor. The "strange attractor" name here applies to the set because it is self-similar at many scales, is infinitely detailed, and attracts points (numbers) to certain recurrent behavior. Scientists study the set for insights into the nonlinear (chaotic) dynamics of real systems. For example, the wildly different behavior exhibited when two numbers with almost the same starting value and lying next to each other in the set's boundary are iterated is similar to the behavior of systems like the weather undergoing dynamic flux because of its "sensitive dependence on initial conditions."

Therefore, no amount of positive or negative, biased or unbiased, reporting by the media can change the eventual result of the election. The media, because it is simply a collection of people, intuitively knows that there is a pattern and that the pattern has, certainly by this point in the election, been established to the point of conclusion. Obama wins.