
The Dictatorship of the Small Minority by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - randomname2
https://medium.com/@nntaled/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
======
sctb
Recent discussions:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dictatorship%20small%20minorit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dictatorship%20small%20minority&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story)

------
mamurphy
I didn't expect this article to be so long or to have such great examples. The
idea that GMO providers should try to convince 100% of the population, not
just the majority, was particularly insightful and unexpected.

It makes sense, though: if, say 10%, of folks will ONLY eat Organic and the
remaining, say 90%, will eat Organic or GMO with equal preference, it makes
your supply chain much easier to supply ONLY Organic food while still
accessing 100% of the market. If you supply both types, you have a more
complex supply chain, and if you supply ONLY GMO, you give up on 10% of the
market.

~~~
rz2k
Am I being pedantic to think that is a weird way to label? Organic refers to
the methods and compounds used to control pests, while GMO refers to the
genetic heritage of the organisms being cultivated. They're cultivated because
they have more desirable traits, but they're still carbon-based organisms.

Anyway, I'm probably making his point for him, but Taleb's anti-expert bias
can drive me up the wall.

~~~
linkregister
> Taleb's anti-expert bias can drive me up the wall.

Indeed, that is why I couldn't make it past the second chapter of
_Antifragile_. His insistence on citationless, just-so stories to explain
everything (in his world everything has a snarky one-liner explanation) make
his writing a huge turn-off to me. I'm surprised about his popularity in the
HN crowd since I would expect engineers to insist on statements being backed
up by evidence.

However, this article contains some good insights. Although it was permeated
with matter-of-fact insults to practically every group of people, the insults
were less vicious than those of many of his other works.

~~~
zem
i wouldn't even mind the just-so stories if they were presented in good faith
as real anecdata, but having him use a _fictional_ just-so story in "the black
swan" was a step too far. it's sad, because the man is a good writer; "black
swan" also contained the best write-up of hempel's raven paradox i've seen,
including martin gardner's/

~~~
linkregister
I haven't checked out _Black Swan_ ; is it worth a read?

~~~
zem
i went and dug up my review from when i read it (the blanked out name is a
friend of mine whose review i was replying to, and who hated the book).
amusingly, my feeling that he was a good writer seems to be me remembering his
style as better than it actually was; i tend to remember the good bits of
stuff longer than the bad:

Reading part 1, I thought "Oh God, ____ is right, the man _is_ an idiot." I
realised, though, that he simply wasn't all that good a _writer_ , which is
not the same thing. I also got the impression that he was indulging in
stylistic experiments, which detracted from the book. Anyway, one or two good
ideas in there, and a nice discussion of Hempel's Raven Paradox (even better
than Gardner's, so score one for him). But mostly part 1 was a matter of
slogging through a lot of text for little reward.

Part 2 got a bit more interesting, though here ____'s second claim of "the
good parts aren't original and the original parts aren't good" was sadly borne
out. Some decent material, but mostly stuff I'd read in lots of other places,
pulled together into (to be fair) a pretty coherent narrative.

Part 3, surprisingly enough, got a lot more interesting. I'm not sure what the
difference was, but it did seem that he was genuinely offering insights of his
own, rather than regurgitating other people's. He did also seem to have some
genuinely valuable stuff to say. At any rate, I found myself reading the rest
of the book with a lot more engagement and a lot less feeling of having to
slog through it.

On the whole, I think he does have a few genuine, and genuinely insightful
points to make, shadowed by his rather clunky writing style and by the fact
that he's rather full of himself. I think I will reread the book a chapter at
a time, to make sure I get his point.

------
PaulHoule
I don't see the threat in Kosher, Halal, etc.

As a non-Muslim in upstate NY I see Halal meat as a net positive influence. It
enables a local alternative supply chain for meat: some restaurants around
here sell really delicious meat, often things like lamb and goat you don't see
every day. Also a lot of non-Muslim farmers can make a living because of this
supply chain.

~~~
kps
Sikhs can't eat Kosher, Halal, etc.

~~~
webwanderings
Anybody can pretty much eat anything. They don't; which is a different matter.

------
Mickydtron
The core insight here, while interesting, ended up being much more generic
than I was expecting it to be after the initial examples. It seems to boil
down to "There exist mechanisms by which a small group can either grow to
dominate a larger group, or have their behavioral norms spread to outside of
their group, or otherwise punch above their weight. These mechanisms involve a
rule or circumstance that is asymmetric."

It is an interesting principle, and useful to keep in mind, but I do not think
it really supports all of the points he makes with it, or justify some of the
language used. For example, I do not think that all drinks being Kosher, or a
high prevalence of halal butcher shops, merit being described as
"dictatorships". In the examples that would merit such strong language, such
as the possibility of an anti-democratic religion dominating a democratic
society and culture, I do not think that the Power of Asymmetry Principle
leads where he tries to go. Specifically, he says that we need to be "more
than intolerant with some intolerant minorities". However, if we examine the
situation while keeping the power of asymmetry in mind, all we need to do is
look for the asymmetry that would give this group its power, and take that
away. In this case, the ability to use violence to enforce religious rules,
specifically the death penalty for apostasy. Without the threat of violence,
fundamentalist Islam would look much more like fundamentalist Christianity,
trying (with various levels of success) to enforce its norms through political
and interpersonal channels, but far from an unstoppable juggernaut.

------
sytelus
I've to give it to Taleb to bring some rather fundamental and obvious in
hindsight insights to explicit clarity. Although one must not confuse
anecdotes with statistics, his writing style is gold.

 _The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not
predicted by the components. The interactions matter more than the nature of
the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for
most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates._

------
squozzer
Taleb mentions the brilliance of Hannibal but fails to mention the stubborness
of the Romans, who never offered terms, even after many defeats.

In the end, Rome destroyed Carthage.

~~~
Mickydtron
I actually am struggling to see the real relevance of the military examples
there at the end. It seems to be there to show that stubbornness and/or
courage results in winning (to rather grossly simplify). But it should be
obvious that neither stubbornness or courage are enough for military victory,
and it's not too hard to find examples where the opposite was what brought
victory. In fact, we don't even need to leave the Punic wars. Hannibal's
winning move at Cannae was in fact to have the center of his battle formation
not be stubborn, and fall back, drawing the Romans into an encircling trap.
Fabian's strategy was seen as cowardly, but as squozzer notes, Hannibal didn't
destroy Rome, while Rome did eventually destroy Carthage.

