Re:The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small M...
by abiro on Friday August 30, 2019 @05:01PM
(#20842680)
Depends on how you read it. What you quote is a nonrigorous statement of the minority rule. Given that he is writing pop science I think some laxity is permissible.
The conventional wisdom is that normally the preferences of the majority prevail. Maybe it’s obvious to others, but I never thought about the minority rule explicitly before reading Taleb. And the rule has practical applications for privacy/climate activists, so I think it’s important not to dismiss it offhandedly.
> It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.
It's a far cry from that claim -- that a minority as small as 3-4% can force the majority to submit to the will of the minority -- to the claim that a majority will accomodate a minority as long as extra cost incurred by the majority is not too much. The former is an unbelievably strong claim while the latter is obvious and inane.