Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

developers are getting the benefits others pay for.

the concept of median used in medical research does not characterize a probability distribution.

The future ain't what it used to be," Berra

Further, the problem is not just that Mithridatization and hormesis can be known in (some) medical circles and missed in other applications such as socioeconomic life. Even within medicine, some get it here and miss it there. The same doctor might recommend exercise so you "get tougher," and a few minutes later write a prescription for antibiotics in response to a trivial infection so you "don't get sick.

it did not so much judge the quality of a trader's performance as encourage him to game the system by working for short-term profits at the expense of possible blowups—like

Further, the random element in trial and error is not quite random, if it is carried out rationally, using error as a source of information. if every trial provides you with information about what does not work, you start zooming in on a solution - so every attempt becomes more valuable, more like an expense than an error. And of course you make discoveries along the way.

it. It was a physical sensation, perhaps a mixture of joy, pride, and terror.

The beast in this book is not just the bell curve and the self-deceiving statistician, nor the Platonified scholar who needs theories to fool himself with. It is the drive to "focus" on what makes sense to us. Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it in others.

Plenty of mildly good news is preferable to one single lump of great news.

With a little bit of luck a computer virus will wipe out all records and free people from their past mistakes.

The hidden risk transfer is not limited to bankers and corporations.

it is easier for your brain to detect differences rather than absolutes

is much easier to understand if something is harmed by volatility—hence fragile—than try to forecast harmful events, such as these oversized Black Swans. But only practitioners (or people who do things) tend to spontaneously get the point.

what's more, he believed that collectively they were even bigger suckers than they were individually.

lack of vigilance is not the cause of the death of a mafia don; the cause of death is making enemies, and the cure is making friends.

Trading may have princes, but nobody stays a king" and "The people you meet on the way up, you will meet again on the way down.

It is those who use others who are the most upset when someone uses them.

By dumping the kitchen sink of scientific references in a paper, one can make another literary intellectual believe that one's material has the stamp of science.

their role being confined to analysis, not decision making.

to avoid dullness may help to filter out the nonessential.)

I disbelieve in structured learning—actually I believe that one can be an intellectual without being a nerd, provided one has a private library instead of a classroom

By generalization, I started to label a rare event as any behavior where the adage "beware of calm waters" can hold. Popular wisdom often warns of the old neighbor who appears to remain courtly and reserved, the model of an excellent citizen, until you see his picture in the national paper as a deranged killer who went on a rampage.

To Nero, a system built on illusions of understanding probability is bound to collapse.

That was my best investment—risk turned out to be the topic I know the best.