
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority [pdf] - networked
http://fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf
======
sidko
Last HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10567630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10567630)

135 points | 21 days ago | 52 comments

------
gruez
In software:
[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LeastFlexibleProtocolWins](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LeastFlexibleProtocolWins)

~~~
mcv
Depends on your perspective. Within a single connection, the most flexible
protocol adapts to the least flexible one, but the flexible protocol wins
more: it gets to connect, which is more important than the details of how you
connect; you just need something you can both agree on. But the flexible
protocol will be able to connect with other inflexible protocols, which the
inflexible protocol can't.

Easiest example: HTML. Browsers are far more lenient towards bad HTML than
they should be according to spec, because it lets them display more websites.
Inflexible browsers lose to flexible ones.

------
bravura
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." \- George Bernard Shaw

~~~
icanhackit
_Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man._

This quote appears here regularly and while I generally agree with the
underlying message we should put on our nuance-goggles and consider the amount
of energy expended by reasonable people repairing the unreasonable person's
path of destruction, and that the progress gauge can go backwards as well as
forwards.

~~~
groutexpectatio
should be perfectly fine to hold extreme opinions. Bayesian distributions
suggests that extreme opinions will be unpopular, and will not find much
evidence from the real world, and will be less likely to gain mass following.

~~~
adrianN
If only humans were rational bayesian reasoners...

------
RachelF
Taleb's point is true, but the style in which he makes it is rambling and
inelegant.

Let's hope this is a pre-print of "Skin in the Game" and this gets fixed up by
an editor.

~~~
olalonde
He recently polled his Twitter followers about that:
[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/672057419841806337](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/672057419841806337)

    
    
      25% Issue as pamphlet
      30% Keep in SITG
      15% Randomize
      30% We're tired of polls

------
cristianpascu
Interesting example here, in Romania, where a very small but vocal minority
(atheists and agnostics, 0.2% of the population) have a constant political
fight against public funding of religious cults (18 officially recognised),
that is the ~0.2% of the annual budget. One of the many points raised is that
its their money too and churches should fund themselves from donations, which
in turn, should not be tax free.

~~~
Scaevolus
Is that public funding through tax rebates? American "nonprofit" organizations
(including churches) enjoy tax-exempt status.

------
rdlecler1
I think they call this tyranny of the minority and accepting it can be a
slippery slope.

------
antidamage
What is mainsteam? It's the agreement dependent on subject by an ever-
changing, large group of people of what is normal behaviour or what is outside
of that. It's ever-changing and by nature made up of lots of different groups
of people agreeing on one particular thing at a time.

I've always held a view that minority groups can be some of the most
conservative groups around - this is how they persist in a culturally fluid
world, by conserving who they are regardless of the social outcome when
tested. So I find it wrong that some groups attach themselves to requests from
society that are liberal in nature when they are entirely conservative in
their own behaviour. But then again, who can fault them? Well, we can.

The definition of "well adjusted" would suggest someone who is open to change.
It also suggests a middle-of-the-road approach, although I can't and won't go
into too much detail there since that phrase is subjective, but in the
understanding that most people will agree with me, I'll make this statement:
the most successful people tend to be well adjusted, at least until they reach
the pinnacle of their success and their various personal flaws become
highlighted through either stress, response to success or simply by way of
being more visible.

Because of this traversal of the median range of human behaviour, minority
groups are naturally held back. This isn't a social bias ending in -ism, the
less successful one is at navigating different groups of society, the less
likely one is to be successful. Opportunities shrink. For those of us without
strong or singular identity, the world opens up.

And yet we need these outliers - every so often, they come up with new ideas
that mainstream humanity wouldn't have thought of on their own, or someone
deeply useful simply strongly identifies with a minority group. No matter how
unsuccessful their peers seem to be, we have to retain them. But right now
we're pitching minority group versus minority group in the only battles they
hope to win or lose. This is the way cultures live or die in a pecking order
that risks homogenizing differences we sorely need.

My opinion for a long time was simple: fit in or get out. This isn't the way I
think any more. The behaviour of key minority groups sometimes offends
mainstream-us on a personal level but they represent no real risk to our own
hegemony.

So we already know that society works. It has worked for the majority for a
long time and minority groups have only seen that situation improve for them.
But now they suffer under the inability to progress where there is no more
room to progress. We had a wonderful century of massive wins for all of us,
but especially minority groups. But it's hard to keep up that progress,
eventually you're nitpicking over small details and pointless social mores.

This century might see the end of minority progression, simply because there
will be no room left to progress as we have in the past. At some point
mainstream society is going to get a new gift: universal tolerance. It could
happen within our lifetimes, but likely it'll require those of us older than
our late teens to expire to for it to truly pervade.

The concepts we're all dealing with today are already old-fashioned. Minority
groups who survive by being intolerant themselves can't last in the face of
the movement they kicked off so long ago. This is a blip in history - 20 or 30
years of angry minority groups and a shrinking of groups that survive on
intolerance in general. I've carefully not named any, but feel free to to some
mental algebra and fill in the blanks with whatever you like. It'll still hold
true.

~~~
jongraehl
Get tolerant or get wrecked sounds great until you look at the details
(especially the asymmetric-nuclear-etc ones). Still, well said (not sure on
"we need differences" \- that's conveniently kumbaya; I'll settle for
"eradicating all differences = monstrous bloodshed so don't do it").

------
known
Anatomy of HATE; If you're not from my caste/religion, you're non-human to me;
[http://wh.gov/iyhMK](http://wh.gov/iyhMK)

