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
fool pay worst
We learn the most from fools ... yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude.
asking matter
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
flags speech labels
It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag , a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation.
want
An option hides where we don't want it to hide.
independent people benefits
I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are.
sometimes randomness wells
Randomness works well in search sometimes better than humans.
stuck randomness dangerous
When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.
common-sense common excuse
Using, as an excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.
errors information robust
For the robust, an error is information.
wise fool dangerous
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
academia enough surface
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.
eye reality effort
By setting oneself totally free of constraints, free of thoughts, free of this debilitating activity called work, free of efforts, elements hidden in the texture of reality start staring at you; then mysteries that you never thought existed emerge in front of your eyes.
tangible favors embedded
We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.
realism skepticism
Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.