Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

while the lives saved by the drug might not be accounted for anywhere.

Political and economic "tail events" are unpredictable, and their probabilities are not scientifically measurable. No matter how many dollars are spent on research, predicting revolutions is not the same as counting cards; humans will never be able to turn politics and economics into the tractable randomness of blackjack.

Bricolage is a form of trial and error close to tweaking, trying to make do with what you've got by recycling pieces that would be otherwise wasted.

There is no evolution without skin in the game.

fewer pedestrians die jaywalking than using regulated crossings.

I discovered the magic of the camera in reestablishing civil/ethical behavior as follows.

When you consider beliefs in evolutionary terms, do not look at how they compete with each other, but consider the survival of the populations that have them.

This dovetails into the "barbell" strategy of taking maximum exposure to the positive Black Swans while remaining paranoid about the negative ones.

I am convinced of that after spending almost all my adult and professional years in a fierce fight between my brain (not Fooled by Randomness) and my emotions (completely Fooled by Randomness) in which the only success I've had is in going around my emotions rather than rationalizing them.

that strange activity called the business meeting, in which well-fed, but sedentary, men voluntarily restrict their blood circulation with an expensive device called a necktie.

It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.

I discovered that it is much more effective to act like a nice guy and be "reasonable

The deregulation led to an increase in safety, confirming the antifragility of attention at work

though we play down the role of chance, especially when it comes to our own discoveries.

The good is mostly in the absence of bad";

Recall that Fat Tony was in favor of just "making a buck" as opposed to being "proven right.

the more complex the regulation, the more bureaucratic the network, the more a regulator who knows the loops and glitches would benefit from it later

In fact the rest are already benefiting from the contribution of the minority.

The wise man listens to meaning; the fool only gets the noise. The modern Greek poet C. P. Cavafy wrote a piece in 1915 after Philostratus' adage "For the gods perceive things in the future, ordinary people things in the present, but the wise perceive things about to happen.

El hecho de añadir a causa de hace que el hecho parezca más verosímil, y mucho más probable. El cáncer producido por el tabaco parece más probable que el cáncer sin una causa determinada; una causa indeterminada significa la inexistencia de una causa.

law of iterated expectations, which I outline here in its strong form: if I expect to expect something at some date in the future, then I already expect that something at present.

you need to know whether you do not like the pursuit of money and wealth because you genuinely do not like it, or because you are rationalizing your inability to be successful at it with the argument that wealth is not a good thing because it is bad for one's digestive system or disturbing for one's sleep or other such arguments.

Systems learn by removing parts, via negativa.

I don't particularly care about the usual. If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life.