The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.
The reference point argument is as follows: do not compute odds from the vantage point of the winning gambler (or the lucky Casanova, or the endlessly bouncing back New York City, or the invincible Ca...
The only condition for such brand of more sophisticated rationalism: to believe and act as if one does not have the full story—to be sophisticated you need to accept that you are not so.
The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice. It works as a sh...
The more you summarize, the more order you put in, the less randomness. Hence the same condition that makes us simplify pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is. And
The more we try to turn history into anything other than an enumeration of accounts to be enjoyed with minimal theorizing, the more we get into trouble. Are we so plagued with the narrative fallacy?†
The market is like a large movie theater with a small door. And the best way to detect a sucker is to see if his focus is on the size of the theater rather than that of the door.
The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
The human mind suffers from three ailments as it comes into contact with history, what I call the triplet of opacity. They are: the illusion of understanding, or how everyone thinks he knows what is g...
The hidden benefit of antifragility is that you can guess worse than random and still end up outperforming.
The fallacy is that what one may need to know in the real world does not necessarily match what one can perceive through intellect: it doesn’t mean that details are not relevant, only that those we te...
The degeneration of philosophical schools in its turn is the consequence of the mistaken belief that one can philosophize without having been compelled to philosophize by problems outside philosophy....
The defender of the dogmas of modern finance and efficient markets started a fund that took advantage of market inefficiencies! It is as if the Pope converted to Islam.
The Nation-state: apartheid without political incorrectness.
The Federal Reserve bank protected them at our expense: when conservative bankers make profits, they get the benefits; when they are hurt, we pay the costs.
THE ONE THING YOU MUST DOThere is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else a...
Some people do not know their own interest—just consider addicts, workaholics, people trapped in a bad relationship, people who support large government, the press, book reviewers, or respectable bure...
So let us call here the teleological fallacy the illusion that you know exactly where you are going, and that you knew exactly where you were going in the past, and that others have succeeded in the p...
Since procrastination is a message from our natural willpower via low motivation, the cure is changing the environment, or one’s profession, by selecting one in which one does not have to fight one’s...
Silver Rule in intellectual debates. You can criticize either what a person said or what a person meant. The former is more sensational, hence lends itself more readily to dissemination. The mark of a...