“ Of course, it is not so easy to falsify, i.e., to state that something is wrong with full certainty. Imperfections in your testing method may yield a mistaken no. The doctor discovering cancer cells m… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Nu căutați ceea ce este precis și local. Nu fiți îngust la minte. Marele descoperitor Pasteur, care a venit cu ideea că norocul îl favorizează pe cel pregătit, a înțeles că pentru a lăsa contingența s… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ My experience is that money and transactions purify relations; ideas and abstract matters like recognition and credit warp them, creating an atmosphere of perpetual rivalry. I grew to find people gree… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Most people fear being without audiovisual stimulation because they are too repetitive when they think and imagine things on their own. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ More data—such as paying attention to the eye colors of the people around when crossing the street—can make you miss the big truck. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Mistaking a naive observation of the past as something definitive or representative of the future is the one and only cause of our inability to understand the Black Swan. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Many, like the great Roman statesman Cato the Censor, looked at comfort, almost any form of comfort, as a road to waste.1 He did not like it when we had it too easy, as he worried about the weakening… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Many amateurs believe that plants and animals reproduce on a one-way route toward perfection. Translating the idea in social terms, they believe that companies and organizations are, thanks to competi… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Lucky fools do not bear the slightest suspicion that they may be lucky fools—by definition, they do not know that they belong to such a category Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Let us say that, in general, failure (and disconfirmation) are more informative than success and confirmation, which is why I claim that negative knowledge is just more robust. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Let us return to pathemata mathemata (learning through pain) and consider its reverse: learning through thrills and pleasure. People have two brains, one when there is skin in the game, one when there… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Kun nainen huutaa, että tekosi oli anteeksiantamaton, hän on jo alkanut antaa anteeksi. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ It turns out, as shown by Karsenty and others who have since embarked on the line of research, that the reverse is also largely true: loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones al… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ It turned out that the ancients—again, those ancients!—were aware of it: the members of the Athenian assemblies were chosen by lot, a method meant to protect the system from degeneracy. Luckily, this… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ It is no secret that large corporations prefer people with families; those with downside risk are easier to own, particularly when they are choking under a large mortgage. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ It is a fallacy that suicide bombers are driven by the promise of a reward of some Islamic paradise with virgins and other entertainment, for, as the anthropologist Scott Atran has pointed out, the fi… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
