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.
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.
I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.
But bankers used to be subjected to Hammurabi’s rule. The tradition in Catalonia was to behead bankers in front of their own banks
I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are m...
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
You view the world from a model.
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.
Procrustes, in Greek mythology, was the cruel owner of a small estate in Corydalus in Attica, on the way between Athens and Eleusis, where the mystery rites were performed. Procrustes had a peculiar s...
My point taken further is that True and False (hence what we call belief) play a poor, secondary role in human decisions; it is the payoff from the True and the False that dominates—and it is almost a...
More data means more information, but it also means more false information.
Learning is rooted in repetition and convexity, meaning that the reading of a single text twice is more profitable than reading two different things once.
In a natural environment, people die without aging—or after a very short period of aging.
If you hear a prominent economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.
If there is something in nature you don’t understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding.
If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's past), then why should our future resemble our current past?
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...
Randomness, in practice, is what we don’t know; to invoke randomness is to plead ignorance).