Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

true wealth consists in worriless sleeping, clear conscience, reciprocal gratitude, absence of envy, good appetite, muscle strength, physical energy, frequent laughs, no meals alone, no gym class, some physical labor (or hobby), good bowel movements, no meeting rooms, and periodic surprises, then it is largely subtractive (elimination of iatrogenics).

The good is not as good as the absence of bad.

chance favors the prepared

Kun nainen huutaa, että tekosi oli anteeksiantamaton, hän on jo alkanut antaa anteeksi.

As the great game theorist Ariel Rubinstein holds: do your theories or mathematical representations, don't tell people in the real world how to apply them. Let those with skin in the game select what they need.

In the long run everything with the most minute vulnerability breaks, given the ruthlessness of time.

Cygnus Atratus In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

Leave people alone under a good structure and they will take care of things.

Further, many writers and scholars speak in private, say, after half a bottle of wine, differently from the way they do in print. Their writing is certifiably fake, fake. And many of the problems of society come from the argument "other people are doing it." So if I call someone a dangerous ethically challenged fragilista in private after the third glass of Lebanese wine (white), I will be obligated to do so here.

he had so little to lose. She accepted since she had no choice.

la conciencia de un problema no significa mucho, sobre todo cuando están en juego intereses personales o instituciones interesadas.

I figured out that whatever I selected myself I could read with more depth and more breadth—there was a match to my curiosity. And I could take advantage of what people later pathologized as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) by using natural stimulation as a main driver to scholarship.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of a Gaussian is its fragility and vulnerability in the estimation of tail events. The odds of a 4 sigma move are twice that of a 4.15 sigma. The odds of a 20 sigma are a trillion times higher than those of a 21 sigma! It means that a small measurement error of the sigma will lead to a massive underestimation of the probability. We can be a trillion times wrong about some events.

We said that mere judgment would probably suffice in a primitive society. It is easy for a society to live without mathematics—

A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion—in other words, the amount of downside he is exposed to.

Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain.

wrote in front of a window overlooking trees:

the same condition that makes us simplify pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is. And the Black Swan is what we leave out of simplification.

Retirees get less upside than downside.

This is no different from the Bob Rubin risk-transfer trade, of delaying risks and making them look invisible.

Every other form is self-serving.*4

We are largely collaborative—except when institutions get in the way.

If you lie to me, keep lying; don't hurt me by suddenly telling the truth.

An intelligent life is all about such emotional positioning to eliminate the sting of harm, which as we saw is done by mentally writing off belongings so one does not feel any pain from losses. The volatility of the world no longer affects you negatively.