Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Talebis a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader, and risk analyst, whose work focuses on problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. His 2007 book The Black Swan was described in a review by the Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since World War II...
NationalityLebanese
ProfessionScientist
CountryLebanon
war fighting lasts
If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.
people house association
The worst side effect of wealth is the social associations it forces on its victims, as people with big houses end up socializing with other people with big houses.
strong athlete men
A competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.
academia prostitution
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.
school daydreaming hated
I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that.
real ifs-and pursuit
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
asking matter
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
mean past data
The same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.
focus traps sucker
The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.
self logic accepting
It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.
irrelevant
Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.
philosophical leisure insight
For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.
effort information doe
Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it.
comfort aging effects
Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.