HL 2@@@@@@@ IL POTERE DELLE MINORANZE ORGANIZZATE NEL MONDE DELLE RETIIL POTERE DEL CONTAGIO

Why you don’t have to smoke in the smoking section—Your food choices on the fall of the Saudi king—How to prevent a friend from working too hard—Omar Sharif’s conversion—How to make a market collapse
Note:2@@@@@@@ IL POTERE DELLE MINORANZE ORGANIZZATE NEL MONDE DELLE RETIIL POTERE DEL CONTAGIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,187

ensemble behaves in ways not predicted by its components.
Note:SISTEMA COMPLESSO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,188

Studying individual ants
Note:L'ASSURDO APPARENTE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,190

This is called an “emergent” property
Note:LE PROPRIETA' DELL'INSIEME

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,191

The rule we discuss in this chapter is the minority rule, the mother of all asymmetries.
Note:LA MADRE DI TUTTO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,194

a naive observer (who looks at the

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,195

standard average) would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
Note:L'ILLUSIONE CHE MASCHERA LA SERVITù

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,209

I realized that I had been drinking kosher liquids without knowing it.
Note:MINUSCOLA ED ESOTERICA INDICAZIONE SULL'ETICHETTA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,211

CRIMINALS WITH PEANUT ALLERGIES
Note:TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,215

A kosher (or halal) eater will never eat nonkosher (or nonhalal) food, but a nonkosher eater isn’t banned from eating
Note:MEGLIO ADEGUARSI ALLA MINORANZA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,216

kosher.

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,218

A disabled person will not use the regular bathroom, but a nondisabled person will use the bathroom for disabled people.
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,224

Which explains why it is so hard to find peanuts
Note:GLI ALLERGICI COMANDANO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,224

on U.S. airplanes and why schools are often peanut-free

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,228

Let us call such minority an intransigent group,
Note:GLI INTRANSIGENTI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,235

If people following the minority rule lived in ghettos
Note:QUANDO LA MINORANZA NON COMANDA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,246

Muslim population is only 3 to 4 percent, a very high proportion of the meat we find is halal.
Note:IN GB

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,260

“organic” food companies are selling more and more products precisely
Note:ALTRA MINORITY RULE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,267

big agricultural companies foolishly believed that all they needed was to win the majority. No,
Note:LA MAGGIORANZA NON CONTA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,281

the spread of automatic shifting cars is
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,282

those who can drive manual shifts can always drive automatic, but the reverse is not true.
Note:CCCCCCCCCCC

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,307

flexible voters can also vote for that extreme faction,
Note:GLI INDIFFERENTI IN POLITICA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,311

THE VETO
Note:TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,312

this explains why some fast-food chains, such as McDonald’s, thrive.
Note:NO VETO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,316

McDonald’s appears to be a safe bet. It is also a safe bet in shady places with few regulars
Note:AL RIPARO DAL RISCHIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,318

Italians are seeking refuge there from a risky meal. They may hate McDonald’s, but they certainly hate uncertainty even more.
Note:SCUDO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,320

Pizza is the same story:
Note:ALTRO RIFUGIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,321

“Once you have 10 percent or more women at a party, you cannot serve only beer. But most men

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,322

will drink wine. So you only need one set of glasses if you serve only wine—the universal donor, to use the language of blood groups.”
Note:MEGLIO IL VINO DELLA BIRRA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,324

the Khazars when they were looking to choose between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Note:ALLA RICERCA DI UNA RELIGIONE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,328

LINGUA FRANCA
Note:TTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,329

one of the persons in the room doesn’t speak German, the entire meeting will be run in…English, the brand of inelegant English used in corporations across the world.
Note:IL MONDO DELLE CORP TEDESCHE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,331

asymmetric rule that those who are nonnative in English know (bad) English, but the reverse—English speakers knowing other languages—is less likely.
Note:ASIMMETRIA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,341

Simply, when the Persians invaded Babylon they found an administration with scribes who could only use Aramaic and didn’t know Persian, so Aramaic became the state language.
Note:LA DIFFUSIONE DELL ARAMAICO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,342

This led to the oddity of Aramaic being used in Mongolia,
Note:Ccccccccc

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,345

Greek replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca in the Levant, and the scribes of Damascus maintained their records in Greek. But it was not the Greeks who spread Greek around the Mediterranean, but the Romans who accelerated the spreading of Greek,
Note:GRECO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,350

GENES VS. LANGUAGES
Note:Ttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,359

Genes follow majority rule; languages minority rule. Languages travel; genes less so.
Note:GENI E LINGUA...COME SI DIFFONDONO....EFFETTO RETE E CONCORRENZA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,367

THE ONE-WAY STREET OF RELIGIONS
Note:Ttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,372

under Islamic law, if a non-Muslim man marries a Muslim woman, he needs to convert to Islam—and if either parent of a child happens to be Muslim, the child will be Muslim.
Note:PRIMA ASIMMETRIA NEL CFR CON I MUSULMANI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,374

becoming Muslim is irreversible, as apostasy is the heaviest crime under the religion, sanctioned by the death penalty.
Note:SECONDA ASIMMETRIA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,377

Under these two asymmetric rules, one can do simple simulations and see how a small Islamic group occupying Christian (Coptic) Egypt can lead,
Note:FOOM

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,379

the religion has weaker rules: the mother is required to be Jewish.
Note:EBREI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,381

the Druze, the Ezidi, and the Mandeans
Note:RELIGIONI GNOSTICHE ESTINTE X SCARSO EFFETTO RETE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,383

these three religions require both parents to be of the faith, otherwise the child and the parents say toodaloo to the community.
Note:Cccccccccc

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,390

Little by little a Christian or Jewish family engaging in a Marrano-style conversion becomes truly converted, as, a couple of generations later, the descendants forget the arrangement of their ancestors.
Note:MARRANI...IL FINTO DIVENTA VERO...POTERE DELL IRREVERSIBILITÀ

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,393

the original spread of Christianity in the Roman empire was largely due to…the blinding intolerance of Christians; their unconditional, aggressive, and recalcitrant proselytizing.
Note:TESI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,396

The “persecution” of the Christians had vastly more to do with the intolerance of the Christians for the pantheon of local gods than the reverse. What we read is history written by the Christian side, not the Greco-Roman one.
Note:LA XSECUZIONE DEI CRISTIANI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,405

Purely monotheistic religions such as Protestant Christianity, Salafi Islam, or fundamentalist atheism accommodate literalist and mediocre minds that cannot handle ambiguity.
Note:TESI SUL MONOTEISMO... SCARSO ECLETTISMO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,411

For Islam itself is ending up being taken over (in the Sunni branch) by purists simply because they are more intolerant than the rest:
Note:POCHI E INTOLLERANTI...I PREDESTINATI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,415

DECENTRALIZE, AGAIN

Note | Location: 1,415

Tttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,416

if one needs, say, a 3 percent threshold in a political unit for the minority rule to take its effect, and on average the stubborn minority represents 3 percent of the population, with variations around the average, then some states will be subject to the rule, but not others. If, on the other hand, we merge all states in one, then the minority rule will prevail all across. This is the reason the U.S.A. works so well.
Note:METTERE DIGHE ALLA RETE...DIVERSIFICARE...ANTIFRAGILE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,421

IMPOSING VIRTUE ON OTHERS
Note:Tttttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,422

How do books get banned? Certainly not because they offend the average person—most persons are passive and don’t really care, or don’t care enough to request the banning.
Note:ALTRO FENOMENO SPIEGATO DA RM

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,424

all it takes is a few (motivated) activists for the banning of some books,
Note:Ccccccc

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,426

The same seems to apply to prohibitions—at least to the prohibition of alcohol in the United States,
Note:ALTRA STORIA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,428

the formation of moral values in society doesn’t come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance.
Note:EVOLUZIONE DELLA MORALE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,437

Once a moral rule is established, it will suffice to have a small, intransigent minority of geographically distributed followers to dictate a norm in society.
Note:HALAL E HARAM

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,441

“Why didn’t the Poles in Warsaw help their Jewish neighbors more?,” responded that they generally did. But it took seven or eight Poles to help one Jew. It took only one Pole, acting as an informer, to turn in a dozen Jews.
Note:LA RESPONSABILITÀ DI UN POPOLO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,444

STABILITY OF THE MINORITY RULE, A PROBABILISTIC ARGUMENT
Note:Ttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,446

do not steal (at least not from within the tribe); do not hunt orphans for entertainment; do not gratuitously beat up Spanish grammar specialists for training, instead use boxing bags (unless you are Spartan and even then you can only kill a limited number of helots for training purposes), and similar interdicts.
Note:OVUNQUE SEMPRE LE STESSE REGOLE MORALI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,450

they are black-and-white, binary, discrete, and allow no shadow.
Note:MARCHIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,453

it would be vastly more likely that these values emerged from a minority than a majority.
Note:TESI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,459

He has two options. The first is cyanide, which obeys a minority rule: a drop of poison (higher than a small threshold) makes the entire liquid poisonous. The second is a “majority-style” poison; it requires more than half the ingested liquid to be poisonous in order to kill.
Note:IPOTESI....AVVELENATORE CHE VUOLE FAR FUORI TUTTI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,462

conditional on the outcome that all people drinking the soda having been killed, the evil man opted for the first, not the second option.
Note:HOLMES INDAGA SULLA STRAGE....COSA INFERISCE?

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,463

majority rule leads to fluctuations around the average, with a high rate of survival.
Note:L IMPROBABILITÀ DELLA REGOLA DI MAGGIORANZA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,465

POPPER-GOEDEL’S PARADOX
Note:Tttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,475

Can democracy—by definition the majority—tolerate enemies?
Note:BELLA DOMANDA

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,476

“Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning of freedom of speech?”
Note:RIFORMULAZIONE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,477

intolerant about intolerance?”
Note:Ccccccccc

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,478

the incoherence that Kurt Gödel (the grandmaster of logical rigor) detected in the United States Constitution while taking the naturalization exam.
Note:INCOERENZE

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,480

Karl Popper independently discovered the same inconsistency
Note:Cccccccccc

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,483

Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, it will eventually destroy our world. So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities.
Note:TESI

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,486

The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.
Note:LA POSIZIONE DI T

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,486

IRREVERENCE OF MARKETS AND SCIENCE
Note:Tttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,488

price changes reflect the activities of the most motivated buyer and seller. Yes, the most motivated rules.

Note | Location: 1,488

REGOLA DI MERCATO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,490

Markets react in a way that is disproportional to the impetus.
Note:L IMPETO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,490

The overall stock markets currently represent more than thirty trillion dollars, but a single order in 2008, only fifty billion, that is, less than two-tenths of a percent of the total, triggered a drop of close to 10 percent, causing losses of around three trillion dollars.
Note:ES CONTAGIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,493

Why did the market react so disproportionately? Because the order was one-way—stubborn: they had to sell and there was no way to convince the management otherwise.
Note:CONTAGIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,496

The market is like a large movie theater with a small door.
Note:L ADAGIO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,498

when someone shouts “fire”—because
Note:Cccccc

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,502

Science isn’t the sum of what scientists think, but exactly as with markets, it is a procedure that is highly skewed.
Note:VALE ANCHE X LA SCIENZA....

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,503

Had science operated by majority consensus, we would be still stuck in the Middle Ages,
Note:NN SIAMO IN DEMOCRAZ

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,505

UNUS SED LEO: ONLY ONE BUT A LION
Note:Tttttttt

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,506

Alexander said that it was preferable to have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.
Note:MOTTO

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,513

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,” wrote Margaret Mead.
NN SOLO GUERRA