“ Every time you use a coffeemaker for your morning cappuccino, you are benefiting from the fragility of the coffeemaking entrepreneur who failed. He failed in order to help put the superior merchandise… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Even political systems follow a form of rational tinkering, when people are rational hence take the better option: the Romans got their political system by tinkering, not by reason. Polybius in his Hi… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Este mult mai dificil să pierzi într-un joc pe care l-ai pus la punct tu însuți. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Don’t talk about progress in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Decentralization is based on the simple notion that it is easier to macrobull***t than microbull***t. Decentralization reduces large structural asymmetries. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Contra the prevailing belief, success isn't being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Conduct yourself toward your parents as you would have your children conduct themselves toward you. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Complex systems are full of interdependencies—hard to detect—and nonlinear responses. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Clearly you cannot manufacture more information than the past can deliver; if you buy one hundred copies of The New York Times, I am not too certain that it would help you gain incremental knowledge o… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Characteristically, Samuelson intimidated those who questioned his techniques with the statement Those who can, do science, others do methodology. If you knew math, you could do science. This is remin… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ By throwing enough words together, some unusual and magical-sounding metaphor is bound to emerge according to the laws of combinatorics. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But we don’t correct for the difference in science, medicine, and mathematics, for the same reasons we didn’t pay attention to iatrogenics. We are suckers for the sophisticated. In institutional resea… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But the worse touristification is the life we moderns have to lead in captivity, during our leisure hours: Friday night opera, scheduled parties, scheduled laughs. Again, golden jail. This goal-driven… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But the larger point is that we can now see that depriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But fragility and antifragility are part of the current property of an object, a coffee table, a company, an industry, a country, a political system. We can detect fragility, see it, even in many case… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Because the bell curve ignores large deviations, cannot handle them, yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty. Its Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Basically this category would include those who think that the cure for obesity is to inform people that they should be healthy. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Assume that you live in a town with two hospitals—one large, the other small. On a given day 60 percent of those born in one of the two hospitals are boys. Which hospital is it likely to be? Nassim Nicholas Taleb
