From predator-prey models (the so-called Lotka-Volterra type of population dynamics), I knew that populations will experience Extremistan-style variability, hence predators will necessarily go through...
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point
I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;at the state level, Republican;at the local level, Democrat;and at the family and friends level, a socialist.If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness...
Further, we are victims to a new disease, called in this book neomania, that makes us build Black Swan–vulnerable systems—progress.
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.
J)ust as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to it in games of chance.
You can always mention Wittgenstein since he is vague enough to always seem relevant
Further, as we discovered during the financial crisis that started in 2008, these blowup risks-to-others are easily concealed owing to the growing complexity of modern institutions and political affai...
What I learned on my own I still remember.
Clearly, binary outcomes are not very prevalent in life; they mostly exist in laboratory experiments and in research papers. In life, payoffs are usually open-ended, or, at least, variable.
[...] what you see is likely to be less Black Swannish than what you do not see.
We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.
What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.
A life saved is a statistic; a person hurt is an anecdote. Statistics are invisible; anecdotes are salient.
Nietzsche had the Latin pun aut liberi, aut libri—either children or books, both information that carries through the centuries.
It is hard for us to accept that people do not fall in love with works of art only for their own sake, but also in order to feel that they belong to a community. By imitating, we get closer to others—...
The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds....
The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever...
Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason.