“ In addition, there seems to be curious evidence of a link between leadership and a form of psychopathology (the sociopath) that encourages the nonblinking, self-confident, insensitive person to rally… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ In a now famous experiment they found that the majority of people, whether predictors or nonpredictors, will judge a deadly flood (causing thousands of deaths) caused by a California earthquake to be… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Imagine going to Mexico with a notebook and trying to figure out the average wealth of the population from talking to people you randomly encounter. Odds are that, without Carlos Slim in your sample,… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with t… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I then completely gave up reading newspapers and watching television, which freed up a considerable amount of time (say one hour or more a day, enough time to read more than a hundred additional books… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I realized that if I were to start writing about the events later they would seem more … historical. There was a difference between the before and the after. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I have two further points to make on this subject. First, justification of overoptimism on grounds that it brought us here arises from a far more serious mistake about human nature: the belief that we… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I found out that telling researchers This is where your methods work very well is vastly better than telling them This is what you guys don't know. So when I presented to what was until then the most… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I feel anger and frustration when I think that one in ten Americans beyond the age of high school is on some kind of antidepressant, such as Prozac. Indeed, when you go through mood swings, you now ha… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Heroism and the respect it commands is a form of compensation by society for those who take risks for others. And entrepreneurship is a risky and heroic activity, necessary for growth or even the mere… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Fragility can be measured; risk is not measurable (outside of casinos or the minds of people who call themselves risk experts). This provides a solution to what I’ve called the Black Swan problem—the… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ For studying courage in textbooks doesn’t make you any more courageous than eating cow meat makes you bovine. By some mysterious mental mechanism, people fail to realize that the principal thing you c… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ For instance, it has been argued since the 1970s that limiting speed on the highway (and enforcing it) leads to an extremely effective increase in safety. This can be plausible because risks of accide… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Dacă faci o proiecție pe baza trecutului în mod liniar, continui o tendință. Dar posibilele devieri viitoare de la cursul trecutului sunt infinite. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Consider the tourist brochures used by countries to advertise their wares: you can expect that the pictures presented to you will look much, much better than anything you will encounter in the place.… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Chiedere alla scienza di spiegare la vita, e questioni vitali, è come chiedere a un grammatico di spiegare la poesia Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their cate… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Cabdrivers did not believe that they understood as much as learned people—really, they were not the experts and they knew it. Nobody knew anything, but elite thinkers thought that they knew more than… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
