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
thinking economy harm
Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it's closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.
smart thinking dumb
Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
thinking people rewards
We should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible.
thinking employment slavery
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
thinking ideas trying
The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
thinking different world
The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.
wall thinking bonus
I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.
thinking world patterns
They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)
reading thinking long
I don't read the papers; I stopped reading the papers. I read the papers only during periods of crisis, and I think papers are too long on a regular day and too short days when we have a crisis.
wall moving thinking
A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe.
thinking people entertainment
We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So you end up with dentists who are more traders than dentists. A dentist should drill teeth and use whatever he does in the stock market for entertainment.
country thinking errors
As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have.
thinking volatility stability
Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.
thinking should-have lessons
Never, never, never think - that's one lesson you should have in life. Never think that lack of variability is stability.