Black Swan Is Relative to Knowledge
Beyond books, consider this simple heuristic: your work and ideas, whether in politics, the arts, or other domains, are antifragile if, instead of having one hundred percent of the people finding your...
Being an executive does not require very developed frontal lobes, but rather a combination of charisma, a capacity to sustain boredom, and the ability to shallowly perform on harrying schedules. Add t...
Aside from the movies, examples of positive-Black Swan businesses are: some segments of publishing, scientific research, and venture capital. In these businesses, you lose small to make big. You have...
As shown from the track record of the prophets: before you are proven right, you will be reviled; after you are proven right, you will be hated for a while, or, what’s worse, your ideas will appear to...
Anything you do to optimize your work, cut some corners, or squeeze more efficiency out of it (and out of your life) will eventually make you dislike it. Artisans have their soul in the game. Primo, a...
And, what’s worse, we didn’t get where we are today thanks to policy makers—but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect.
And, as expected, via negativa is part of classical wisdom. For the Arab scholar and religious leader Ali Bin Abi-Taleb (no relation), keeping one’s distance from an ignorant person is equivalent to k...
And we can almost always detect antifragility (and fragility) using a simple test of asymmetry: anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the r...
An honest person will never commit criminal acts, but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.
An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant, the opposite.
An ad hominem attack against an intellectual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message.
Am spus că se pare că avem o înclinație naturală spre platonificare și spre a gândi în termenii materialelor studiate: nimeni, fie el zidar sau filosof al naturii, nu poate scăpa prea ușor de aservire...
Administrators everywhere on the planet, in all businesses and pursuits, and at all times in history, have been the plague.
Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful.
A very rarely discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities
A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.
A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher; every day confirms to its staff of analysts that butchers love turkeys with increased statistical confidence.
A squeeze occurs when people have no choice but to do something, and do it right away, regardless of the costs.
A random series will always present some detectable pattern. I