“ Verba volent, words fly. Never have people who talk and don’t do been more visible, and played a larger role, than in modern times. This is the product of modernism and division of tasks. Recall that… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, with the law incapable of catching them. Iatrogenics has both delayed and invisible consequences. It i… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ To see how transfer of antifragility works, consider two scenarios, in which the market does the same thing on average but following different paths. Path 1: market goes up 50 percent, then goes back… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ This, perhaps is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one's ego. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is risky, that it is a bad thing—and that eliminating randomness is done by eliminating randomness. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can’t know) is the central idea of uncertainty. Much Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ This anchoring to a number is the reason people do not react to their total accumulated wealth, but to differences of wealth from whatever number they are currently anchored to. This is the major conf… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ They had all the means to develop a spinning machine, but nobody tried—another example of knowledge hampering optionality. They probably needed someone like Steve Jobs—blessed with an absence of colle… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ They game the system while citizens pay the price. At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control. The chief ethical rule is the… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ These were the days before I decided to climb up the mountain, speak slowly and in a priestly tone, and try shaming people rather than insulting them. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ There are so many things we can do if we focus on antiknowledge, or what we do not know. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The virtue of capitalism is that society can take advantage of people’s greed rather than their benevolence, but there is no need to, in addition, extol such greed as a moral (or intellectual) accompl… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The tradition has been to think that aging causes bone weakness (bones lose density, become more brittle), as if there was a one-way relationship possibly brought about by hormones (females start expe… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The policies we need to make decisions on should depend far more on the range of possible outcomes than on the expected final number. I Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior. Good luck. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The epiphany I had in my career in randomness came when I understood that I was not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to even try to fight my emotions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The bias lowers our perception of the risks we incurred in the past, particularly for those of us who were lucky to have survived them. Your Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more efficient. - The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
