&gt; Is this really your belief?<p>No.<p>&gt; Very easy: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;895&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;895&#x2F;</a><p>So if a system is too complex for us to discover its equations (so far) that means that we don&#x27;t know anything about it? Let me tell you that in grad school I studied applied math, and we had those very, very simple non-linear ODEs, yet the best we could do with them was simulate them numerically and make general statements about their behavior from observation. Every person is probably governed many non-linear equations, much more complicated than the simple ones people usually study, and they all interact in a complex system. So, for now, I guess we have to settle to many years of observational research. That doesn&#x27;t mean we haven&#x27;t learned anything.<p>&gt; Feel free to provide equations, or even just clear and unambiguous statements.<p>My statements are very clear (I think; I&#x27;m not a native English speaker). I still don&#x27;t understand how you manage to misinterpret them or think they&#x27;re vague. My guess is that you&#x27;re not trying to understand what it is that I&#x27;m saying.<p>&gt; You are ignoring the collective action problem here.<p>No, I&#x27;m not. You are ignoring both the state and the dynamics of the system. Groups that have little power have little means of increasing it (basically, it takes money to make money) other than through collective action. Some forms of power can&#x27;t be obtained alone. If you want to be elected to office, you have to have a base and form alliances. The only reason I used your terminology of money (You will turn down exactly the amount you think you&#x27;re expected to gain) is because you keep reducing a complex system to simple scenarios, and when I say that the system is complex you say I&#x27;m evading your question (which is about an irrelevant model), so this time I tried to answer using your model, and now you&#x27;ve expanded it -- ambiguously, because you didn&#x27;t explain <i>how</i> white power can win without your cooperation if every player behaves like you do. Your model invariably leads to local-minimum Nash equilibria, yet history has shown over and over how Nash equilibria are overcome; ergo -- your model is very, very wrong.<p>But I&#x27;ll tell you what. If you&#x27;re willing to explain what your entire model for society is, I&#x27;ll gladly point out the mistakes.<p>&gt; For much the same reason, I don&#x27;t vote<p>You don&#x27;t vote or participate in demonstrations or other collective actions because you feel that your position is not in any imminent danger. Alternatively, you might feel that you won&#x27;t make a difference anyway. Yet another possibility is that your empathy is low, so you gain little emotional reward by helping people in need. Or, your empathy is high, but not applied to faceless strangers. We are all different.<p>&gt; Since you seem to think the laws of arithmetic don&#x27;t apply to counting humans<p>It&#x27;s not the laws of arithmetic, it&#x27;s their applicability to reality. C+C=2C, but that doesn&#x27;t mean that that&#x27;s the speed you&#x27;d observe.<p>&gt; I promise I can follow along.<p>Perhaps, if you were really interested in understanding how society works, but even though I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;d enjoy it -- and so will you -- it would take too much time. My professional training is in history (and math) but I am not expert enough to reduce the important parts to something manageable in HN comments.<p>&gt; I repeat my prediction: &quot;more wordplay that ignores the simple arithmetic and uncomfortable question.&quot; I add a new prediction: &quot;no equations or unambiguous statements shall be forthcoming.<p>At first I thought I&#x27;d write simply &quot;kick those Asians out&quot;, but then I thought I&#x27;d better make a prediction of my own: you&#x27;ll go on insisting on not learning how social systems work and how people behave, but keep on believing that smart people who spend their lives studying such systems get it wrong. The capability of people to convince themselves that what they don&#x27;t know is not worth knowing -- or that people who know it are wrong -- is not only very powerful, but a well-known psychological coping mechanism. Otherwise, we&#x27;d all be in constant dread of what we don&#x27;t know.