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
Nassim Nicholas Taleb quotes about
math america errors
Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere. And it is not thanks to universities, which obviously claim a lot more credit than their accomplishments warrant. Like Britain in the Industrial Revolution, America's asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms fo trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.
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.
serendipity luck
...maximize the serendipity around you.
intellectual
I'm a private intellectual, not a public one.
ifs-and narrative dictatorship
You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative.
technology opposites cowardice
The opposite of manliness isn't cowardice; it's technology.
knowledge order littles
We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order...we take what we know a little too seriously.
peace finding-peace term
You find peace by coming to terms with what you don't know.
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.
policy-making anxiety relief
Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
ideas stories black-swan
Ideas come and go, stories stay.
childhood becoming middle
Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.
advice want blame-someone
When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.
hard-work opportunity odds
Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.