“ Beware the confusion between correctness and intelligibility. Part of conventional wisdom favors things that can be explained rather instantly and in a nutshell—in many circles it is considered law. H… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is good for you while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Believe me, it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure. We are social animals; hell is other people. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma and embarrassment. America’s specialty is to take these small risks for the… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ After things got bad for him, they somehow recovered by some invisible hand, and he was led to believe that it was his intrinsic property to recover from hardships by running every time into a new opp… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A mild degree of unpredictability in your behavior can help you to protect yourself in situations of conflict. Say Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A lesson I learned from this ancient culture is the notion of megalopsychon (a term expressed in Aristotle’s ethics), a sense of grandeur that was superseded by the Christian value of humility. There… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Scholarship without erudition and natural curiosity can close your mind and lead to the fragmentation of disciplines. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The only way we have left to control suicide-terrorists would be precisely to convince them that blowing themselves up is not the worst-case scenario for them, nor the end scenario at all. Making thei… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word. We are le… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ On a folded piece of paper, in turn, each one of them would write a predetermined part of a sentence, not knowing the others’ choice. The first would pick an adjective, the second a noun, the third a… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Nature likes to overinsure itself. Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems. We humans have two kidneys (this may even include accountants), extra spare parts,… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Mother Nature does not develop Alzheimer’s—actually there is evidence that even humans would not easily lose brain function with age if they followed a regimen of stochastic exercise and stochastic fa… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ More generally, we underestimate the share of randomness in about everything, a point that may not merit a book—except when it is the specialist who is the fool of all fools. Disturbingly, science has… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere.… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it. For instance, many wreck their reputations merely by trying to defend them. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ In general, positive Black Swans take time to show their effect while negative ones happen very quickly—it is much easier and much faster to destroy than to build. (During Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I had a vivid illustration of domain dependence in the driveway of a hotel in the pseudocity of Dubai. A fellow who looked like a banker had a uniformed porter carry his luggage (I can instantly tell… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Como se supone que dijo Stalin (que algo sabía sobre la mortalidad): «Una muerte es una tragedia; un millón de muertes, una estadística». La estadística permanece callada en nuestro interior. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
