In software: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LeastFlexibleProtocolWins

What is mainsteam? It's the agreement dependent on subject by an ever-changing, large group of people of what is normal behaviour or what is outside of that. It's ever-changing and by nature made up of lots of different groups of people agreeing on one particular thing at a time.

I've always held a view that minority groups can be some of the most conservative groups around - this is how they persist in a culturally fluid world, by conserving who they are regardless of the social outcome when tested. So I find it wrong that some groups attach themselves to requests from society that are liberal in nature when they are entirely conservative in their own behaviour. But then again, who can fault them? Well, we can.

The definition of "well adjusted" would suggest someone who is open to change. It also suggests a middle-of-the-road approach, although I can't and won't go into too much detail there since that phrase is subjective, but in the understanding that most people will agree with me, I'll make this statement: the most successful people tend to be well adjusted, at least until they reach the pinnacle of their success and their various personal flaws become highlighted through either stress, response to success or simply by way of being more visible.

Because of this traversal of the median range of human behaviour, minority groups are naturally held back. This isn't a social bias ending in -ism, the less successful one is at navigating different groups of society, the less likely one is to be successful. Opportunities shrink. For those of us without strong or singular identity, the world opens up.

And yet we need these outliers - every so often, they come up with new ideas that mainstream humanity wouldn't have thought of on their own, or someone deeply useful simply strongly identifies with a minority group. No matter how unsuccessful their peers seem to be, we have to retain them. But right now we're pitching minority group versus minority group in the only battles they hope to win or lose. This is the way cultures live or die in a pecking order that risks homogenizing differences we sorely need.

My opinion for a long time was simple: fit in or get out. This isn't the way I think any more. The behaviour of key minority groups sometimes offends mainstream-us on a personal level but they represent no real risk to our own hegemony.

So we already know that society works. It has worked for the majority for a long time and minority groups have only seen that situation improve for them. But now they suffer under the inability to progress where there is no more room to progress. We had a wonderful century of massive wins for all of us, but especially minority groups. But it's hard to keep up that progress, eventually you're nitpicking over small details and pointless social mores.

This century might see the end of minority progression, simply because there will be no room left to progress as we have in the past. At some point mainstream society is going to get a new gift: universal tolerance. It could happen within our lifetimes, but likely it'll require those of us older than our late teens to expire to for it to truly pervade.

The concepts we're all dealing with today are already old-fashioned. Minority groups who survive by being intolerant themselves can't last in the face of the movement they kicked off so long ago. This is a blip in history - 20 or 30 years of angry minority groups and a shrinking of groups that survive on intolerance in general. I've carefully not named any, but feel free to to some mental algebra and fill in the blanks with whatever you like. It'll still hold true.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

This quote appears here regularly and while I generally agree with the underlying message we should put on our nuance-goggles and consider the amount of energy expended by reasonable people repairing the unreasonable person's path of destruction, and that the progress gauge can go backwards as well as forwards.

should be perfectly fine to hold extreme opinions. Bayesian distributions suggests that extreme opinions will be unpopular, and will not find much evidence from the real world, and will be less likely to gain mass following.

Taleb's point is true, but the style in which he makes it is rambling and inelegant.

Let's hope this is a pre-print of "Skin in the Game" and this gets fixed up by an editor.

Interesting example here, in Romania, where a very small but vocal minority (atheists and agnostics, 0.2% of the population) have a constant political fight against public funding of religious cults (18 officially recognised), that is the ~0.2% of the annual budget. One of the many points raised is that its their money too and churches should fund themselves from donations, which in turn, should not be tax free.