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Eric Brown's avatar

Consider Nassim Taleb's Minority Rule - that a small but intransigent minority can dominate an entire population and have them submit to their preferences.

Nassim cites that 3-4% is enough, so the 6% of the population that is woke is certainly far above this threshold.

Brian Chau's avatar

I completely agree. However, excluding specifically them from power will take less effort and organization than convincing them on a large scale.

Brad & Butter's avatar

Three counter-bets against this idea:

1. Conversion will be easier than strong minority exclusion, but majority atomization will be easier than social change of the majority. It is inherently asymmetric, like Yarvin's entropy vs extropy.

2. There is inherent congruence between minority perception and the Penrose Square Root Law of voting power https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/why-do-people-overestimate-the-size

3. When applying the Tipping Point, the topology of the social network changes the percentage of the strong minority, in general less tight-knit cultures has slower information diffusion thus needing larger committed groups, and cliques requires KOLs (selective role priority in commitment). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(sociology)#Other_uses

Eric Brown's avatar

While I agree that excluding them is easier than convincing them, it's still going to be extremely difficult.

Brian Chau's avatar

Not really, the ideas of wokeness are not only delusional but also contrary to almost every human impulse, which is not something that can be said about trumpism, socialism, or most ideologies. It's a unique ad-hoc ideology whose primary purpose is to make up an excuse for why everything liberal inheritors have tried has failed. Anyways I should stop myself before I spoil more future material.

BKGVR's avatar

What happens when you have multiple intransigent minorities? I think Taleb's rule only works if the entire rest of the country is apathetic or disorganized.

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Jun 23, 2022
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ᴛʀᴀᴄᴇ ᴊᴏʜᴀɴɴᴇꜱᴇɴ's avatar

Torin, I could not agree more. I use “yes and” all the time.