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
party gossip filters
Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
ideas stories black-swan
Ideas come and go, stories stay.
ethics good-things contagious
Aesthetics, ethics, and many good things in humans are contagious.
needs stories
You need a story to displace a story.
arrows understanding together
The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.
odds alternatives outcomes
Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.
belief liquor restaurants
Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.
data
The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.
return combination variance
I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.
firsts twenties utopia
The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.
government bitcoin currency
Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.
future mind news
We cannot truly plan, because we do not understand the future-but this is not necessarily a bad news. We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.
procrastination soul entrapment
Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
stronger kill-me
What kills me makes others stronger,