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
independent wealthy harder
It is much harder to become independent if you are wealthy than to become wealthy if you are independent.
imagination genius academic
The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination
party serendipity suffering
Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
growing-up good-life role-models
People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up
inability outliers courses
The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history
banking outcomes negative
If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.
procrastination fighting exercise
Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.
errors government benefits
You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system.
leadership senior people
Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.
information opinion weak
When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.
swans black remember
Remember that you are a Black Swan.
water storm too-late
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.
remember stills my-own
What I learned on my own I still remember
technology differences slavery
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free