Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

“A BS detection heuristic would be to use education in reverse: hire, conditional on an equal set of skills, the person with the least label-oriented education.

It means that the person had to succeed in spite of the credentialization of his competitors and overcome more serious hurdles. In addition, people who didn’t go to Harvard are easier to deal with in real life.”

“A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism. I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.”

“Alexander said that it was preferable to have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.”

“Alexander the Magnus was once called to solve the following challenge in the Phrygian city of Gordium (as usual with Greek stories, in modern-day Turkey). When he entered Gordium, he found an old wagon, its yoke tied with a multitude of knots, all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to figure out how they were fastened.

An oracle had declared that he who would untie the knot would rule all of what was then called 'Asia', that is, Asia Minor, the Levant, and the Middle East. After wrestling with the knot, the Magnus drew back from the lump of gnarled ropes, then made a proclamation that it didn’t matter for the prophecy how the tangle was to be unraveled. He then drew his sword and, with a single stroke, cut the knot in half.

No 'successful' academic could ever afford to follow such a policy. And no Intellectual Yet Idiot. It took medicine a long time to realize that when a patient shows up with a headache, it is much better to give him aspirin or recommend a good night’s sleep than do brain surgery, although the latter appears to be more 'scientific'. But most 'consultants' and others paid by the hour are not there yet.”

“An honest person will never commit criminal acts, but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.”

“Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.”

“Because what matters in life isn’t how frequently one is 'right' about outcomes, but how much one makes when one is right. Being wrong, when it is not costly, doesn’t count — in a way that’s similar to trial-and-error mechanisms of research.”

“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.”

“Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.”

“Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.”

“Decentralization is based on the simple notion that it is easier to macrobullsh*t than microbullsh*t. Decentralization reduces large structural asymmetries.”

“Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”

“English 'manners' were imposed on the middle class as a way of domesticating them, along with instilling in them the fear of breaking rules and violating social norms.”

“Entrepreneurs are heroes in our society. They fail for the rest of us.”

“Formation of moral values in society doesn’t come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance.”

“Freedom is always associated with risk taking, whether it leads to it or comes from it.”

“Having an assistant (except for the strictly necessary) removes your soul from the game.”

“How much you truly 'believe' in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it.”

“If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.”

“If you want to study classical values such as courage or learn about stoicism, don’t necessarily look for classicists. One is never a career academic without a reason.

Read the texts themselves: Seneca, Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius, when possible. Or read commentators on the classics who were doers themselves, such as Montaigne – people who at some point had some skin in the game, then retired to write books.

Avoid the intermediary, when possible. Or fuhgetaboud the texts, just engage in acts of courage.”

“If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life.”

“In real life, every single bit of risk you take adds up to reduce your life expectancy. If you climb mountains and ride a motorcycle and hang around the mob and fly your own small plane and drink absinthe, and smoke cigarettes, and play parkour on Thursday night, your life expectancy is considerably reduced, although no single action will have a meaningful effect.

This idea of repetition makes paranoia about some low-probability events, even that deemed 'pathological', perfectly rational.”

“It is much more immoral to claim virtue without fully living with its direct consequences.”

“It is no secret that large corporations prefer people with families; those with downside risk are easier to own, particularly when they are choking under a large mortgage.”

“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.”

“Let us return to pathemata mathemata (learning through pain) and consider its reverse: learning through thrills and pleasure. People have two brains, one when there is skin in the game, one when there is none.

Skin in the game can make boring things less boring. When you have skin in the game, dull things like checking the safety of the aircraft because you may be forced to be a passenger in it cease to be boring.

If you are an investor in a company, doing ultra-boring things like reading the footnotes of a financial statement (where the real information is to be found) becomes, well, almost not boring.”

“Life is sacrifice and risk taking, and nothing that doesn't entail some moderate amount of the former, under the constraint of satisfying the latter, is close to what we can call life.

If you do not undertake a risk of real harm, reparable or even potentially irreparable, from an adventure, it is not an adventure.”

“Making some types of errors is the most rational thing to do, when the errors are of little cost, as they lead to discoveries. For instance, most medical 'discoveries' are accidental to something else. An error-free world would have no penicillin, no chemotherapy, almost no drugs, and most probably no humans.

This is why I have been against the state dictating to us what we 'should' be doing: only evolution knows if the 'wrong' thing is really wrong, provided there is skin in the game to allow for selection.”

“Never engage in detailed overexplanations of why something is important: one debases a principle by endlessly justifying it.”

“No muscles without strength, friendship without trust, opinion without consequence, change without aesthetics, age without values, life without effort, water without thirst, food without nourishment, love without sacrifice, power without fairness, facts without rigor, statistics without logic, mathematics without proof, teaching without experience, politeness without warmth, values without embodiment, degrees without erudition, militarism without fortitude, progress without civilization, friendship without investment, virtue without risk, probability without ergodicity, wealth without exposure, complication without depth, fluency without content, decision without asymmetry, science without skepticism, religion without tolerance, and, most of all: nothing without skin in the game.”