The Dictatorship of the Small Minority: The Most Intolerant Wins

The following situation is the best example I’m aware of for gaining insight into the operation of a complex system. It just takes a tiny number of intransigent minorities — a certain type of intransigent minority – to force the entire society to bow to their desires, perhaps three or four percent of the total population. Furthermore, minority domination creates an optical illusion: a naive observer would believe that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it looks silly, it’s because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for it (beware of scientific and academic intuitions and hasty judgments; they don’t work, and standard intellectualization fails with complicated systems, but not with your grandmothers’ knowledge).

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The underlying principle behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in ways that the components cannot foresee. The nature of the units is less important than the interactions between them. Individual ant studies will never (and we can confidently say never in most cases) provide us with insight into how the ant colony functions. To do so, one must first comprehend an ant colony as an ant colony, nothing more, nothing less, and not a collection of ants. This is referred to as a “emergent” attribute of the whole, in which parts and total differ because the interactions between them are what important. Interactions can also be governed by extremely simple principles. The minority rule is the rule we’ll talk about in this chapter.

The minority rule will demonstrate how all it takes for society to work effectively is a tiny number of intolerant moral individuals with skin in the game, in the form of courage.

Ironically, this illustration of complexity struck me while I was at the New England Complex Systems Institute’s summer cookout. A friend who was kosher and only ate Kosher dropped by to say hi as the hosts were setting up the table and unpacking the drinks. I offered him a glass of lemonade, a yellow sugared water with citric acid that some people call lemonade, knowing full well that he would refuse it due to his dietary restrictions. He didn’t do it. He drank the lemonade-like beverage, and another Kosher individual said, “liquids around here are Kosher.” We had a look at the carton. A fine print indicated that it was Kosher: a tiny symbol, a U inside a circle. Those who need to know and search for the small print will notice the emblem. Others, such as myself, had been speaking prose without realising it for years, and drinking Kosher liquids without realising they were Kosher liquids.

Figure 1: A lemonade container with a circular U signifying that it is Kosher (literally).

Criminals who are allergic to peanuts

A weird thought occurred to me. The Kosher population in the United States is less than three tenths of one percent of the total population. Nonetheless, it appears that almost every drink is Kosher. Why? Simply because adopting completely Kosher eliminates the need for specific markers, separate aisles, separate inventory, and various stocking sub-facilities to distinguish between Kosher and nonkosher drinks. The following is a simple rule that alters the total:

A kosher (or halal) eater will never consume nonkosher (or nonhalal) food, although nonkosher eaters are not prohibited from eating kosher.

Alternatively, rephrased in a different domain:

A disabled person will not use a conventional bathroom, but a non-disabled person will use a disabled person’s restroom.

Granted, we sometimes hesitate to use the restroom with the disabled sign because of a misunderstanding – mistaking the rule for the one for parking cars, and believing that the bathroom is only for the handicapped.

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A person with a peanut allergy will not eat things that come into contact with peanuts, but a person who does not have a peanut allergy will be able to eat items that do not include any traces of peanuts.

Which explains why peanuts are so hard to come by on planes and why schools are peanut-free zones (which, in a way, increases the number of persons with peanut allergies as reduced exposure is one of the causes behind such allergies).

Let’s apply the rule to certain domains where it’s possible to have fun:

A good person will never commit a crime, while a criminal will gladly engage in legal activities.

Let’s name this intransigent minority an intransigent minority, and the majority a flexible majority. And the rule is that the alternatives are asymmetric.

I once played a practical joke on a friend. Years ago, when Big Tobacco was hiding and repressing proof of secondary smoking’s effects, restaurants in New York had smoking and nonsmoking sections (even aeroplanes had, absurdly, a smoking section). I once went to lunch with a European visitor, and the establishment only had smoking portions available. We had to smoke in the smoking zone, so I persuaded my friend that we needed to buy cigarettes.

Languages versus. Genes

When my collaborator, geneticist Pierre Zalloua, and I looked at genetic data in the Eastern Mediterranean, we observed that both invaders, Turks and Arabs, left few genes, and in the case of Turkey, tribes from East and Central Asia introduced a totally new language. Surprisingly, the populations of Asia Minor that you read about in history books still exist in Turkey, but under new names. Furthermore, Zalloua and his colleagues have demonstrated that Canaanites from 3700 years ago account for more than a tenth of the genes of current residents of the state of Lebanon, with only a small number of new genes added, despite the fact that nearly every possible army has passed through for sightseeing and pillaging. [1] While Turks are Mediterraneans who speak an East Asian language, the French (North of Avignon) are predominantly Northern Europeans who speak a Mediterranean language.