Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Arabic: نسيم نقولا طالب‎‎, alternatively Nessim or Nissim, born 1960) is a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader, and risk analyst, whose work focuses on problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. His 2007 book The Black Swan was described in a review by The Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since World War II. Taleb is an author, has been a professor at several universities, serving as Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering since September 2008, and as co-editor in chief of the academic journal, Risk and Decision Analysis since September 2014. He has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance, a hedge fund manager, a derivatives trader and is currently listed as a scientific adviser at Universa Investments. He criticized the risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises, subsequently profiting from the late-2000s financial crisis. He advocates what he calls a "black swan robust" society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events. He proposes antifragility in systems, that is, an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events, errors, and volatility as well as "convex tinkering" as a method of scientific discovery, by which he means that decentralized experimentation outperforms directed research. 2Early life and family background Taleb was born in Amioun, Lebanon to Minerva Ghosn and Najib Taleb, a physician/oncologist and a researcher in anthropology. His parents were Greek Orthodox Lebanese with French citizenship, and he attended a French school there, the Grand Lycée Franco-Libanais. His family saw its political prominence and wealth reduced by the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975. 2Education Taleb received his bachelor and master of science degrees from the University of Pari
At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control.
This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is risky, that it is a bad thing—and that eliminating randomness is done by eliminating randomness.
My characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on. These types often consider…
My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile.
Practitioners are usually too busy practitioning to write books, articles, papers, speeches, equations, theories and get honored by Highly Constipated and Honorable Members of Academies).
The complex world, the notion of 'cause' itself is suspect; it is either nearly impossible to detect or not really defined—another reason to ignore newspapers, with their constant supply of causes for things.
This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.
The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates!
Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.
Variations also act as purges. Small forest fires periodically cleanse the system of the most flammable material, so this does not have the opportunity to accumulate. Systematically preventing forest fires from taking place 'to be safe' makes the big one much worse.
When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they just call you arrogant.
The rules you explain are less convincing than the ones you don’t explain—or have to explain.
Never take investment advice from someone who has to work for a living.
Money corrupts those who talk (and write) about it more than those who earn it.
They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).