Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

He is often involved in a strange ritual, something commonly called "a meeting." Now, in addition to these traits, he defaults to thinking that what he doesn't see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.

values unscheduled meditation.

an employee is also a risk-management strategy.

Alas, it has been hard for me to fit these ideas about fragility and antifragility within the current U.S. political discourse—that beastly two-fossil system. Most of the time, the Democratic side of the U.S. spectrum favors hyper-intervention, unconditional regulation, and large government, while the Republican side loves large corporations, unconditional deregulation, and militarism—both are the same to me here.

major ramification of the ludic fallacy: how those whose job it is to make us aware of uncertainty fail us and divert us into bogus certainties through the back door.

la muerte a menudo es un buen paso profesional para el escritor).

People who are trapped in their jobs

The original Aramaic version had a wild ass, instead of a wolf, showing off his freedom. But the wild ass ends up eaten by the lion. Freedom entails risks—real skin in the game. Freedom is never free.

this avoidance of small mistakes makes the large ones more severe.

Puede que no sea algo exigible desde el punto de vista ético, pero la política más eficaz y más libre de vergüenza es la transparencia máxima, la cual incluye la transparencia de intenciones.

Look it. Would you rather be the world's greatest lover, but have everyone think you're the world's worst lover? Or would you rather be the world's worst lover but have everyone think you're the world's greatest lover?

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 always asymmetric, with one consequence much bigger than the other

modernity likes the abstract over the particular;

Consider that transgenic-GMO eaters will eat non-GMOs, but not the reverse.

Administrators everywhere on the planet, in all businesses and pursuits, and at all times in history, have been the plague.

So when I presented to what was until then the most hostile crowd in the world, members of the American Statistical Association, a map of the four quadrants, and told them: your knowledge works beautifully in these three quadrants, but beware of the fourth one, as this is where the Black Swans breed, I received instant approval, support, offers of permanent friendship, refreshments (Diet Coke), invitations to come present at their sessions, even hugs.

Even from an anatomical perspective, it is impossible for our brain to see anything in raw form without some interpretation. We may not even always be conscious of it.

Teller. We have always been suckers for those who tell us about the future

for someone to be able to help me, he had to be both a practitioner and a researcher, with practice coming before research.

you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other.

the price difference appears to be small enough to be negligible

There is one world in which I believe the habit of mistaking luck for skill is most prevalent—and most conspicuous—and that is the world of markets. By

If my brain can tell the difference between noise and signal, my heart cannot. Such

Something has worked in the past, until—well, it unexpectedly no longer does, and what we have learned from the past turns out to be at best irrelevant or false, at worst viciously misleading.