Like many geniuses, Taleb doesn’t “suffer fools gladly”, so he can seem dismissive of those who don’t risk skin in the game. But his insights into human economic and political behavior are well worth the risk of his sarcastic invective. [ see also Post 69 ]
Left vs Right versus Everybody Else
Post 65. January 12, 2019
Intolerant Minority Rule
BothAnd is a dynamic balance
In the third book of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Incerto trilogy, Skin In the Game, he discusses a statistical and sociological topic that is relevant to the BothAnd concept. "It suffices for an intransigent minority . . . to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to be forced to submit to their preferences." By "intransigent" he means resistant to change and intolerant of other peoples beliefs and opinions. This "minority rule" is a holistic principle applicable to large composite groups of objects from atoms to people. "The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in a way that is not predicted by the components." The actions & interactions of many small parts add-up to significant effects on the whole, resulting in novel emergent behaviors not found on the lower levels. For human populations, this out of proportion power of the few is in contrast to the naive democratic assumption that the Majority Rules.
Among large communities of people, we tend to find a range of beliefs & practices from one extreme to another, but with the most common clustered in the center, as depicted in the iconic Bell Curve. In political systems we call the opposite ends of the curve : "left wing" and "right wing". And they tend to be rigid in their beliefs compared to the flexibility of the masses. So Taleb notes that any asymmetry in the power of the radicals will result in changes for the whole body politic. That's because the moderate middle will typically submit to the will of a highly motivated minority. But it also means that, if the extremists are more evenly balanced, the political system will tend to oscillate in the mushy middle of the spectrum.
The recent de-stabilization of the American government has been caused by a battle of wills between radicals on both sides. "You think that because some extreme right or left wing party has say, the support of ten percent of the population that their candidate would get ten percent of the votes. No : these baseline voters should be classified as "inflexible" and will always vote for their faction." So the weakness of the flexible BothAnd attitude is that the moderate majority can be pushed back & forth between immoderate combatants. And it has ever been thus. But the strength of the Golden Mean is the stability to regain its balance after being tipped this way or that. The Bell Curve when inverted looks like a spinning top that wavers but remains upright due to its dynamic symmetry.
Taleb observes that "on average the stubborn minority represents three percent of the population", but it's responsible for most political change over time, both positive and negative. The 3% consists of both geniuses & nut-jobs, visionaries & reactionaries, radicals & revisionists, so we're fortunate that their numbers tend to offset in the tails of the Bell Curve. "This is the reason the USA works so well . . . we are a federation, not a republic." We are not a true democracy, but a mixed government with enough flexibilty to accomodate a variety of beliefs & practices, and a constitution that mandates tolerance of differences of opinion. It's a BothAnd way of life that has weathered many storms of polarized politics, but keeps on spinning ─ assisted perhaps by occasional inputs of energy from the polar opposites.
End of Post 65
G*D versus gods :
Most world religions agree on the most general concepts of their god model, but they differ widely in the details. The universal abstract traits of godhood are those taught by philosophers and theologians to wisdom seekers. But the various worldly specifics of divine appearance, likes, dislikes, etc. are taught by priests to the masses, who only want to know how to get what they want from the supernatural providers, and to avoid pissing them off. The G*D model of this blog is limited to philosophical generalities, and avoids any pretense of dogma on matters of personal opinion, or of private revelation.
The spinning top remains stable only as long as it keeps moving.
Majority Overrule : Although intended to promote democracy, the American Constitution made provisions to prevent the Tyranny of the Majority. Perhaps the founding fathers weren’t familiar with the asymmetrical statistical influence of powerful minorities of wealth & faith. These are people with “skin in the game”, who are motivated to minimize their risks of money and eternal life. The higher the risk, the more intransigent and intolerant they become, for fear of losing what is most important to them.
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