“ I am convinced that there exists a tradable security in the Western world that would be 100% correlated with the changes in temperature in Ulan Bator, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ How? Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing w… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ How can we logically go from specific instances to reach general conclusions? How do we know what we know? How do we know that what we have observed from given objects and events suffices to enable us… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Hire the successful trader, conditional on a solid track record, whose details you can understand the least. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ He is susceptible to conference room boredom and is incapable of talking to businessmen, particularly the run-of-the-mill variety. Nero is allergic to the vocabulary of business talk, not just on plai… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Have you noticed that while corporations sell you junk drinks, artisans sell you cheese and wine? Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Harvard is like a Vuitton bag or a Cartier watch. It is a huge drag on the middle-class parents who have been plowing an increased share of their savings into these institutions, transferring their mo… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Greenspan’s actions were harmful, but even if he knew that, it would have taken a bit of heroic courage to justify inaction in a democracy where the incentive is to always promise a better outcome tha… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Given the unattainability of perfect robustness, we need a mechanism by which the system regenerates itself continuously by using, rather than suffering from, random events, unpredictable shocks, stre… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Further, skin in the game creates diversity, not monoculture. Economic insecurity worsens the condition. Journalists are currently in the most insecure profession you can find: the majority live hand… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Finally, when young people who want to help mankind come to me asking, What should I do? I want to reduce poverty, save the world, and similar noble aspirations at the macro-level, my suggestion is: 1… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ FAT TONY: My dear Socrates … you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally righ… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Evidence shows that we do much less thinking than we believe we do-except, of course, when we think about it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Events that are nonrepeatable are ignored before their occurrence, and overestimated after (for a while). After Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Corollary to Moore’s Law: every ten years, collective wisdom degrades by half.* Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Cherry-picking has optionality: the one telling the story (and publishing it) has the advantage of being able to show the confirmatory examples and completely ignore the rest—and the more volatility a… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ By the mechanism of retrospective determinism we will find the cause—actually, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But things are even worse: in real life, every single bit of risk you take adds up to reduce your life expectancy. If you climb mountains and ride a motorcycle and hang around the mob and fly your own… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
