Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
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If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.
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Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process.
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The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i.e., bell-curve), and almost computable.
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To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
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Modernity widened the distance between the sensational and the relevant.
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I have never had personal debt and never will.
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We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.
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Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.
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There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
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The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.
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Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer.
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Simplicity is not so simple to attain.
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It is now the scientific consensus that our risk-avoidance mechanism is not mediated by the cognitive modules of our brain, but rather by the emotional ones. This may have made us fit for the Pleistocene era. Our risk machinery is designed to run away from tigers; it is not designed for the information-laden modern world.
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Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.
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Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don't take the unskilled seriously.
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Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.
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Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to 'restore confidence.' Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
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Unlike a well-defined, precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality.
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For many people, commuting is the worst part of the day, and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would be a straightforward way to reduce minor but widespread suffering.
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Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing.
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A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
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Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.
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In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense.
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The key to wealth is that it doesn't matter. Once you've had it, you don't think anything of it; you can wear cheap watches.