The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority. How Europe will eat Halal — 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 T he best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation.
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. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not predicted by the components. This example of complexity hit me, ironically, as I was attending the New England Complex Systems institute summer barbecue.
Technofascism and the three percent | TechCrunch. Everywhere I look, I see the magic number: 3%. On the right, a whole quasi-militia movement is named that. On the left, activists report “it takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships.” Nassim Taleb argues that once an intransigent minority reaches “3 or 4%” of the total population, the latter will “have to submit to their preferences.” But it seems like everyone is intransigent now — and I believe technology has a lot to do with that. The causality is pretty straightforward. Then, slowly, these isolated groups do what isolated groups do: bit by bit, degree by degree, they — and, especially, their attitudes towards other groups — become more extreme. Obviously this doesn’t happen to everyone. What happens if and when one of them is fascist? This seems like a good time to point out that both the right and the left claim they’re fighting fascism. Taleb again: Featured Image: Ningyou/Wikimedia Commons UNDER A CC BY-SA 3.0 LICENSE.
If Robots and AI Steal Our Jobs, a Universal Basic Income Could Help. Some fear that robots and AI will steal our jobs. They probably will (in the near-term, at least half of them). If that happens, what will we do for a living? How will we earn money? In this post I’ll be discussing one of the most important proposed solutions to job loss due to automation—the notion of “universal basic income” (sometimes called guaranteed minimum income). Specifically, I want to discuss: 1. Let’s dive in. Predictions on Job Loss In 2013, Dr. The figure was recently verified by McKinsey & Company, who suggests 45 percent of jobs today will be automated with exponential technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and 3D printing.
The concept is called technological unemployment, and most careers, from factory workers and farmers to doctors and lawyers, are likely to be impacted. The expected implications of technological unemployment vary widely. Other experts project that technological unemployment will be massively disruptive to society. 1. 2. 3. Understanding the anti-elite Trump vote | Green Agenda.
The aftermath of the stunning victory of Donald Trump to the White House has left many asking the same question: how on Earth did he do it? While the analysis is still fresh, and formulating, one can highlight three theories as to why Trump will be the next President of the United States. The first, and probably most common among liberals, is that Trump’s victory was due to him effectively stoking racial fears. This theory is based on the idea of a “whitelash”, the idea “that Mr. Trump won in large part because he managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage.”
Donald Trump’s victory was the result of a backlash from white people who saw their status diminishing with increasing diversity in the United States. Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the South Point Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m not here to try and provide a definitive answer to Trump’s victory. However, what is interesting about these conclusions is how they have become so separated. Building Momentum for Change | Green Agenda. Does strategic community organising create and lead sweeping social change?
Or does social change momentum arrive from disruptive actions and sweep individuals and organisations along with it? This is the question tackled by US labour, civil rights and immigration rights activist brothers Paul and Mark Engler in This is an Uprising; the answer, of course, is ‘both’. This is an Uprising is an analysis of social change, how it has occurred, and how contemporary campaigners may make it occur again. It is being widely read and discussed among Australian climate activists. Using various 20th century case studies, including Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaign in Birmingham, the overthrow of Milosevic in Serbia, the marriage equality campaign, the Arab Spring, and climate activism, the authors contrast different approaches to social change and identify the critical role of nonviolent civil resistance.
This is an Uprising does justice to this sentiment.