Transportation didn’t get safer just because people learn from errors, but because the system does. The experience of the system is different from that of individuals; it is grounded in filtering.
To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
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...
To Fail Seven Times, Plus or Minus Two Let me stop to issue rules based on the chapter so far. (i) Look for optionality; in fact, rank things according to optionality, (ii) preferably with open-ended,...
This, perhaps, is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one’s ego.fn3
This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.
This is one of the many reasons that journalism may be the greatest plague we face today—as the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification.
This high-yield market resembles a nap on a railway track.
This absence of literary culture is actually a marker of future blindness because it is usually accompanied by a denigration of history, a byproduct of unconditional neomania. Outside of the niche and...
Things designed by people without skin in the game tend to grow in complication (before their final collapse). There is absolutely no benefit for someone in such a position to propose something simple...
Things are always obvious after the fact. The civil servant was a very intelligent person, and this mistake is much more prevalent than one would think. It has to do with the way our mind handles hist...
There were two main sources of technical knowledge and innovation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the hobbyist and the English rector, both of whom were generally in barbell situation...
There is something nonphilosophical about investing one’s pride and ego into a my house/ library/ car is bigger than that of others in my category—it is downright foolish to claim to be first in one’s...
There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.
The worst problem of modernity lies in the malignant transfer of fragility and antifragility from one party to the other, with one getting the benefits, the other (unwittingly) getting the harm, with...
The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
The problem with information is not that it is diverting and generally useless, but that it is toxic.
The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.
The only definition of rationality that I’ve found that is practically, empirically, and mathematically rigorous is the following: what is rational is that which allows for survival. Unlike modern the...