Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

He felt justified to show that "he fared well relative to the industry.

It was taken for granted that people learned to be tolerant there;

later legitimized by some type of formalization. The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.

So the reader can imagine my state of mind when

jealousy is to be found within the same art, talent, and condition.*10

Such statements, that other traders had also gotten into trouble, are self-incriminating.

Journalists can teach us how to not learn.

History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps.

focusing, rather, on the precise and vivid events that easily come to our minds.

The problem is that they did not want these tables to exhibit any form of regularity. Yet real randomness does not look random!

just as with the color blue, having a word for something helps spread awareness of it.

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.

someone may evolve and contradict earlier beliefs

Accept that being human involves some amount of epistemic arrogance in running your affairs. Do not be ashamed of that. Do not try to always withhold judgment—opinions are the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting—yes, after this diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places.*

Most people in the real world don't obsess over it.

I recall how we were taught in school how far more civilized and wiser we were than those in the Balkan communities

Siempre es preferible optar por aquellas cosas que funcionan desde hace mucho tiempo, pues es más probable que ya hayan alcanzado su estado ergódico. Y, de todos modos, en el peor de los casos, el problema sería que no sabemos cuánto durarán.* Recordemos que la carga de la prueba recae en quien perturba un sistema complejo y no en la persona que protege el statu quo.

Who gets rewarded, the central banker who avoids a recession or the one who comes to "correct" his predecessors' faults and happens to be there during some economic recovery? Who is more valuable, the politician who avoids a war or the one who starts a new one (and is lucky enough to win)?

hackers make systems stronger.

It struck me how lacking in imagination we are:

I have two further points to make on this subject. First, justification of overoptimism on grounds that "it brought us here" arises from a far more serious mistake about human nature: the belief that we are built to understand nature and our own nature and that our decisions are, and have been, the result of our own choices. I beg to disagree. So many instincts drive us.

and lack of vigilance on the part of the bank.

That all millionaires were persistent, hardworking people does not make persistent hard workers become millionaires:

True, our knowledge does grow, but it is threatened by greater increases in confidence, which make our increase in knowledge at the same time an increase in confusion, ignorance, and conceit.