Modernity starts with the state monopoly on violence, and ends with the state’s monopoly on fiscal irresponsibility.
Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.
Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.
Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and...
Men destroy each other during war, themselves during peacetime.
Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute.
Mathematics is not just a numbers game, it is a way of thinking.
Los Cisnes Negros que imaginamos, de los que hablamos y nos preocupamos no se parecen a los que previsiblemente son Cisnes Negros. Como veremos a continuación, nos preocupamos de los sucesos «improbab...
Locke’s definition of a madman: someone reasoning correctly from erroneous premises.
Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it in others.
Like tormenting love, some thoughts are so antifragile that you feed them by trying to get rid of them, turning them into obsessions. Psychologists have shown the irony of the process of thought contr...
Let me warn against misinterpreting the message here. The argument is not against the notion of intervention; in fact I showed above that I am equally worried about underintervention when it is truly...
La estrategia de los descubridores y emprendedores es confiar menos en la planificación de arriba abajo y centrarse al máximo en reconocer las oportunidades cuando se presentan, y juguetear con ellas....
L'odio è amore con un piccolo errore da qualche parte nella programmazione: un errore che si potrebbe correggere, ma che è molto difficile trovare
Joseph Stiglitz, with two colleagues, the Orszag brothers (Peter and Jonathan), looked at the very same Fannie Mae. They assessed, in a report, that on the basis of historical experience, the risk to...
It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters.
It seemed, wrote Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders and civil wars, our republic became stronger [and] its citizens infused with virtues. … A little bit of agitation gives resources to souls an...
It is hard to resist discussion of artificial history without a comment on the father of all pseudothinkers, Hegel. Hegel writes a jargon that is meaningless outside of a chic Left Bank Parisian café...
It is hard to explain to naive data-driven people that risk is in the future, not in the past.
It is also related to a problem called denigration of history, as gamblers, investors, and decision-makers feel that the sorts of things that happen to others would not necessarily happen to them.