Nassim Nicholas Taleb
harmful addiction heroin carbohydrates monhtly salary
“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
taleb - bitcoin currency government
“Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.”
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb
bitcoin idea cryptocurrency authority crowd
“Which is why Bitcoin is an excellent idea. It fulfills the needs of the complex system, not because it is a cryptocurrency, but precisely because it has no owner, no authority that can decide on its fate. It is owned by the crowd, its users. And it has now a track record of several years, enough for it to be an animal in its own right.”
—Nassim Nicolas Taleb
charm insult people offend nerdiness opposite
“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
wrong direction alone right assertive idiot gene psychopats
“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
stoic transform fear prudence pain transformation desire
“A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
procrastination natural defence things care wisdom
“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.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
difference technology slavery slaves aware free
“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
wit seduce intelligence nerdiness
“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
remember black swan
“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
prophet vision blind
“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
hope science ancient respect currency
“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
economist equilibrium normal distribution argue ignore rat
“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.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
meditation narcissistic hurt anyone
“Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
curious cience gifted arts practical business leftover economist
“The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
modernity without youth heroism age wisdom life grandeur
“Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
difficulty wake genius
“Difficulty is what wakes up the genius”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
academia knowledge prostitution love
“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
read books less valuable unread
“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones…".
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
modernity ethics legalese
“Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
knowledge problem books bird ornithologist
“The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
imagination genius intellect surpasses academic
“The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
problem experts know not
“The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
poor countries bribes D.C. USA promise work corporations
“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Karl marx control slave convince employee
“Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
abundance harder handle scarcity
“Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
simpler better complicate chain unanticipate effects
“The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
idea story storytelling
“Ideas come and go, stories stay.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
autodidact free
“Only the autodidacts are free.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
rare event estimate empirical observation statistics probability
"The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
fall pride fast cleanly trial error master
"Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
box born live school work store think die
"They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called "work" in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they talk about thinking "outside the box"; and when they die they are put in a box."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
busy declare incompetence rid of you
"Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
payoff human venture proportional expectatin
"The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
phenomena normal extraordinary black swan
"There are two possible ways to approach phenomena.
The first is to rule out the extraordinary and focus on the "normal." The examiner leaves aside "outliers" and studies ordinary cases.
The second approach is to consider that in order to understand a phenomenon, one needs to first consider the extremes-particularly if, like the Black Swan, they carry an extraordinary cumulative effect."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
exam bureaucrat economist hack nonlinearities dynamics
"People who are good at exams (and become bureaucrats, economists, or hacks), my experience has been, are not good at understanding nonlinearities and dynamics."
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb
odds rare event computable
“the odds of rare events are simply not computable”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
variance epistemology lack knowledge mean
“Variance…is epistemologically, a measure of lack of knowledge about the average; hence the variance of variance is, epistemologically, a measure of lack of knowledge about the lack of knowledge of the mean”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
harmful society economist
"…do harmful things for society: become an economist..."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb