You don't need to be a scientist to understand this one. You've been there. You bang on a ketchup bottle. And nothing happens. You bang some more, and maybe a drop or two of ketchup falls onto your burger. Bang and bang and suddenly, the entire contents of the ketchup bottle pours onto your plate, drowning your meal.
That is, quite literally, the tipping point. It is a scientific phenomenon in which the same small incremental change has little impact until just one more small incremental change has an enormous impact. It was first applied to social situations in the early 1970s by economist Thomas Schelling. Other sociologists followed up on Schelling's work and built a mathematical model for the tipping point of "white flight." They found that in some neighborhoods the tipping point was only 5 percent of the population, but in other neighborhoods, blacks made up 40 percent or 50 percent of the population before the occurrence of "white flight."
Author Malcolm Gladwell has taken tipping point theory one step further. With crime, for instance, he argues that relatively minor, incremental reduction in small crimes can actually bring down the overall violent crime rate. And vice versa, a succession of violent crimes can set off a massive wave of violence. Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point," has brought this phrase into our discussion of so many situations.
So tonight we will consider this question: are we at the tipping point in Iraq? Have things gotten so bad there that violence is now overwhelming and unstoppable? Or have the elections tipped the scale back toward the direction of peace and optimism?
Tonight Chris Bury will lay out the theory of the tipping point, and hear from the some of the theory's believers and detractors. Ted Koppel will then turn to Gladwell and New York Times columnist and author Tom Friedman, who understands the context and challenges of the Middle East so well.
We hope you'll join us.
Sara Just & the "Nightline" StaffSenior Producer
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