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
resilience thanks sissy
We didn't get where we are thanks to the sissy notion of resilience.
growing-up good-life role-models
People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up
imagination genius academic
The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination
facts obvious
Things always become obvious after the fact
real blow risk
Anything that provides you with very, very stable income, very stable conditions, maybe generally stable, that often, it masks real risks, risks of blow-ups.
fraud ifs
If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.
simple differences doctors
The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference
leadership senior people
Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.
errors government benefits
You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system.
jobs children college
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.
ignorance knowledge limits
Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.
numbers typewriters statistics
If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'
trying busy incompetence
Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
hands top-down choices
In politics we face the choice between warmongering, nation-state loving, big-business agents on one hand; and risk-blind, top-down, epistemic arrogant big servants of large employers on the other. But we have a choice.