Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide winner-take-all effects.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Luck is the grand equalizer.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinion.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The author cites researcher David Howard's idea of post-traumatic growth. Howard contends that some individuals faced with a traumatic event actually develop new strength.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Being self-owned is a state of mind.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, with the law incapable of catching them. Iatrogenics has both delayed and invisible consequences. It is hard to see causal links, to fully understand what’s going on.Under such epistemic limitations, skin in the game is the only true mitigator of fragility.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds....
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Love without sacrifice is like theft
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal. So it needs to be used with care, moderation and close adult supervision.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice. It works as a short-term cure.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Life is about execution rather than purpose.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What I learned on my own I still remember
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's past), then why should our future resemble our current past?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to its conclusion.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Things always become obvious after the fact
Nassim Nicholas Taleb