The most intolerant wins. The dominance of the stubborn minority.
The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in ways not predicted by its components. The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will almost never give us a clear idea of how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called “emergent” property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters are the interactions between such parts. And interactions can obey very simple rules. P69.
The minority rule explains why a small intransigent minority of people (with a high level of intolerance / skin in the game) will even at a small level of 3 or 4 % of the population dictate the behaviour of the whole population.
For instance nearly all soft drinks that are sold are Kosher in the USA. Very few people actually want Kosher food. But those people who do want it wont eat anything else. The majority don’t really care if the food is Kosher or not as such they simply accept it when it is. It is therefore easier for shops to stock and drinks company to sell drinks that everyone can buy. The preference for Kosher is therefore imposed on the majority even though the majority have no preference for it.
The whole population submits to the dominance of the minority because the majority do not care enough and do not have enough invested to fight the minority on their preference. The minority who feel deeply about the issue are prepared to change their behaviour and create disruption for the majority so causing behaviour change in the majority.
Therefore, influencing a small highly motivated, active group can lead to the whole population to adopt positions they otherwise would never take. (think USA gun control, USA rules on campaigns finance etc) (my summary of ideas P69 -74).
Don’t give crap. Don’t take crap.
Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him. P22
You can criticise either what a person said or what a person meant. The former is more sensational, hence lends itself more readily to dissemination. The mark of the charlatan… is to defend his position or attack a critic by focusing on some of specific statements (“look what he said”) rather than blasting his exact position (“look at what he means” or, more broadly, “look at what he stands or” – for the latter requires an extensive grasp of the proposed idea. P181
It can be useful to consider that many superstitions and beliefs exist and have remained in place because they provide some benefit in their outcome rather than the fact they are logically valid. Thus the value in many beliefs is in their outcomes not their logic. (my summary)
In real life, belief is an instrument to do things, not the end product. This is similar to vision: the purpose of your eyes is to orient you in the best possible way, and get you out of trouble when needed, or help you find prey at a distance. Your eyes are not sensors designed to capture the electromagnetic spectrum. Their job description is not to produce the most scientific representation of reality rather the most useful one for survival. P213
We can not possibly measure and assess everything as if we were a computer; we therefore produce, under evolutionary pressures, some short-cuts and distortions. Our knowledge of the world is fundamentally incomplete, so we need to avoid getting into unanticipated trouble. And even if our knowledge of the world were complete, it would still be computationally near-impossible to produce a precise unbiased understanding of reality. P216
I have shown in Antifragile that making some types of errors is the most rational things to do, when the errors are of little cost, as they lead to discoveries. For instance, most medical “discoveries” are accidental to something else. An error free world would have no penicillin no chemotherapy…. Almost no drugs and most probably no humans. P217
Lets consider a betting at a casino. For the sake of argument lets say that 1% of gambler go bust. If you gamble at the casino over the same time window then you will also have the same chance of going bust at the casino. But if you gambled every day for 100 days. You go bust on day 28 so now there is no longer a day 29. By increasingly the time line of the bets you increase you chances of going bust to almost 100%.
Many recommendations fail to take into account the impact of time on risk. That is to say you get continually exposed to the risk. They also fail to take into account that you will likely to be unable continue after you have become the victim of this risk.
So recommendations based on the long term results of the financial market. You can not expect to match the average of the market because at some point something is likely to happen to get in the way of you doing so and so prevent you continuing. This may for instance be because you need to reduce your exposure due to losses or something in your personal life stops you such as a divorce.
We can not apply cost benefit analysis to situations that have a defined stop in them. (going bankrupt at a casino or getting shot when betting on Russian roulette). The stop point means that you can not calculate an expected return because if you keep playing you hit a stop point (death in Russian roulette) meaning expected returns are not calculable.
People confuse risk of ruin with variations and fluctuations. In other words can you keep playing. If so then risks may actually be beneficial. Even when the risks are in volatile situations. You want to gain the benefits of risk without hitting the down side of an end point. (summary ideas from P.223 -233)