Details Matter!
- RG
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
One letter can make a big difference. Or one number.
I’ve mentioned You Are Not So Smart (YANSS) before. It’s a podcast created by David McRaney, who is a science journalist, author, and speaker who is fascinated by brains, minds, and culture. I’ve been listening to YANSS for years, and it’s well worth the time.
On episode 313, David McRaney and his guest, Erica Chenoweth, discussed the work done by Chenoweth and their colleague Maria Stephan on the so-called “3.5% rule”.
When I first heard about this, I was a bit suspicious, as I was concerned it might be related to the so-called “3 percenters”, who claim that the movement’s name refers to the number of American colonists who fought against the British during the American Revolution. Better thought of as a movement or ideology, rather than a defined group, they are described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and were added to the Canadian government’s list of terrorist organizations in 2021.
“Three Percenters” believe that individual “patriots” must be “prepared” to “stand up to” government “overreach”, and make numerous claims which bear little or no relation to reality.
Like the name.
The origin of the name is based on the unsubstantiated assertion - by one of the early figures within the group – that “only 3% of colonists” fought the British, and that their movement could prevail with similar numbers.
Most sources I found discussing Three Percenters focus on the group’s beliefs and actions, rather than on the origin of the name, which is usually described as being based on a myth, or as a “pseudo-historical attempt” to link their movement to the militia movement during the US Revolutionary War.
I did find one source, however, which went into more detail of the claims and their (lack of) support. The author, John A Tures, describes the “’three percent’ myth” as being derived from a claim that only 80,000 people served in the Continental Army and militia during the Revolutionary War, out of a population (in 1780) estimated at 2,780,369, yielding 2.96%.
In fact, the size of the Continental Army appears to have been closer to 100,000, not counting the militia, which is estimated at more than double that number, along with the state navies, Continental Marines, and those who served on American Privateers. Supportable estimates of the actual percentage who fought against the British range between 15% and 25%. (For context, the only estimate I found for the number of Three Percenters was 10,000 in 2018 – assuming a US population of 342 million, that would put them at... 0.0029%, so... yeah.)
In any case, as noted above, details matter, and 3% is NOT the same as 3.5%.
In stark contrast, the 3.5% “rule” is based on actual research by actual academics, with actual evidence. It is very important to note, however, that the authors are not making any grand claims, but are rather observing data they gathered on the success rates of civil resistance efforts between 1900 and 2006, focusing on nonviolent efforts to bring about regime change.
I’ve previously commented on the fact that the study of human behaviour is vastly more complex and complicated than “mere” physics, and the study of human systems is an order of magnitude beyond that. This ground-breaking work, though, is helping to establish a framework for future research, and is generating questions and ideas for further study.
But one of the first questions I had was around what impact the 3.5% rule has had on the phenomenon it is attempting to describe? Is there something fundamentally important about that number? Or is it just a coincidental correlation based on the study data? Or, is there a threshold that shifts due to other factors, such as the overall population of a nation?
Is violence vs non-violence really the key factor in the equation? Or are there other factors we don’t yet understand? What is the impact of social media?
These are just a few of the myriad questions which are hard to define, harder to measure, and harder still to isolate from all the other factors at play. That, of course, does not stop people from using this new “rule” to inform their strategies for future action.
This can be seen in the recent “No Kings” protests, in June and October of 2025. Also known internationally as “No Dictators” or “No Tyrants”, these demonstrations were sometimes framed in percentage terms, obviously with an eye to the 3.5% rule.
Unfortunately, it is hard to estimate the number of attendees at the hundreds of (known) protests, assess the accuracy of estimates, and understand how this relates to the “actual” popular support within the movement. For context, the June demonstrations were estimated (conservatively, I suspect) somewhere between 4 and 6 million people (ie, roughly 1.2 to 1.8% of the US population), while the October demonstrations were estimated between 5 and 7 million people (ie, between 1.5 and 2.10% of the US population).
These represent two of the largest one-day protests in US history, and certainly establish the popularity and influence of the No Kings movement. I find it entertaining that Trump is not bragging about crowd sizes in this particular case... Odd, huh?
One factor which I consider to be extremely important is that both protests were non-violent, and attempts by the Trump administration to describe them as violent were laughably unsuccessful, at least in part due to the brilliant strategy of dressing in inflatable costumes and dancing. Trump’s rhetoric makes it clear that he wants to use force to suppress “violent” protests, and the fact that there has been almost no violence makes that very difficult.
I worry about the possibility of violent conflict, though, and often think of the iconic photo from the Tiananmen Square protests, in 1989, in which a single person stood in front of a string of tanks.
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If there is a US version of this iconic photo, the one blocking the tanks will most likely be an inflatable frog, which would capture both the tragedy and idiocy of Trump’s presidency.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Cheers!