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
wise smart school
I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent...Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patently intellectually defective ones, like the former U.S. president George W. Bush, who score high on them (130), are testing the test and not the reverse.
wise fool dangerous
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
wise stupid political
The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is whether financial and political news makes sense to him.
wise nerd fool
The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither
serendipity luck
...maximize the serendipity around you.
weakness
It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.
callous designed people provide social turn
In social policy, when we provide a safety net, it should be designed to help people take more entrepreneurial risks, not to turn them into dependents. This doesn't mean that we should be callous to the underprivileged.
functions home human run textbook understood victims view
We are victims of the post-Enlightenment view that the world functions like a sophisticated machine, to be understood like a textbook engineering problem and run by wonks. In other words, like a home appliance, not like the human body.
noticed
Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right.
drop except local
I don't go to the doctor except when I'm very ill, and when I go to India, I drink a drop of local water.
accept false knowledge limits people
The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.
experience looking next recognize solace time
The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.
I have never had personal debt and never will.
delay large members united
In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense.