My principle activity is to tease those who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously.
If you ever do have to heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time.
If you engage in a Black Swan–dependent activity, it is better to be part of a group.
For a theory is a very dangerous thing to have.
Charlatan was held to be a synonym for empirick. The word empiric designated someone who relied on experiment and experience to ascertain what was correct. In other words, trial and error and tinkerin...
But bankers used to be subjected to Hammurabi’s rule. The tradition in Catalonia was to behead bankers in front of their own banks
Artificial, man-made mechanical and engineering contraptions with simple responses are complicated, but not complex, as they don’t have interdependencies. You push a button, say, a light switch, and g...
A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to its conclusion.
Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.
Higher concentration of dopamine appears to lower skepticism and result in greater vulnerability to pattern detection; an
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
There is a Yiddish saying: If I am going to be forced to eat pork, it better be of the best kind. If I am going to be fooled by randomness, it better be of the beautiful (and harmless) kind.
There is a Yiddish saying: If I am going to be forced to eat pork, it better be of the best kind.
The problem lies in the structure of our minds: we don’t learn rules, just facts, and only facts.
Take a population of 10 people, 9 having a net worth of $ 30,000 and 1 having a net worth of $ 1,000. The average net worth is $ 27,100 and 9 out of 10 people will have above average wealth.
So, suspecting that Nero had a contract on her, she got herself Mithridatized against the poisons that would have been available to her son’s underlings. Like Mithridates, Agrippina eventually died by...
Nykyaika: loimme nuoruuden ilman sankaruutta, iän ilman viisautta ja elämän ilman loistoa.
Note that I am not relying in this book on the beastly method of collecting selective corroborating evidence. ...I call this overload of examples naïve empiricism--successions of anecdotes selected to...
Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
In a natural environment, people die without aging—or after a very short period of aging.