In Skin in the Game, Taleb talks about the concept of the stubborn minority rule. This is the phenomenon where a relatively intolerant (about some specific subject) group end up dictating the rules or norms for everyone, even though they make up only a small percent of the population. A simple example of this is people with various dietary restrictions. Vegans will never eat meat, but non-vegans are okay with eating vegan food, so catering companies may choose to offer vegan-friendly food for everyone to cut down on the costs of having to make multiple type of meals. The result is the rule of the minority, vegans in this case, being imposed on the majority.

This sounds like one of the results of the Curse of the Moderate that I’ve thought and written about before. The idea came about simply from observing that people with more extreme opinions are typically more passionate, almost always shouts louder, and in general invest more in the proliferation of their ideas than people with moderate opinions. This results in the moderate view points being always drowned out by more extreme views, hence the Curse.

A single person may hold relatively extreme views on a few things, but probably not many. I think that on most things, most people are moderates, and therefore “cursed”. When this curse occurs in an area where the moderate can tolerate the extreme without much downside, while the extreme cannot accept the moderate, minority rule can develop. Dietary restrictions fall in this area: non-vegans (i.e. the moderates) can eat vegan food without much downside, vegans cannot eat meat at all; non-halal eaters can eat halal food perfectly fine, halal eaters cannot even touch non-halal food.

However, in areas where the moderate cannot tolerate the extreme without incurring heavy costs, minority rule won’t necessarily occur, but the curse will still be effective. This is where the voices of the moderate are still overshadowed by the louder minority, but the will of the minority cannot be imposed on the majority, at least not fully. People who support ultra restrictive diets for example, where the majority could not reasonably consume the same food, will not be able to “rule over” everyone.