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
order pseudo embrace
You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.
trying rats normal
If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.
nice arrogant action
Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice, being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.
fraud ifs
If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.
facts obvious
Things always become obvious after the fact
poetry want annoying
If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.
mistake light information
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.
taken past decision
If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could, over your lifetime, you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other. You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. Or to rephrase, You decide principally based on fragility, not so much on True/False.
intelligent ideas messages
An ad hominem attack against an individual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message.
next crash save-a-life
Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that.
numbers typewriters statistics
If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'
government next usual
My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.
grandchildren grandparent debt
The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.
resilience get-better resilient
Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.