It takes a lot of intellect and confidence to accept that what makes sense doesn’t really make sense.
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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
Trust those who are greedy for money a thousand times more than those who are greedy for credentials.
To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
Medieval man was a cog in a wheel he did not understand; modern man is a cog in a complicated system he thinks he understands.
Failure-resistant is achievable; failure-free is not.
Many are so unoriginal they study history to find mistakes to repeat.
Literature comes alive when covering up vices, defects, weaknesses, and confusions; it dies with every trace of preaching.
Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.
When people say, 'I am investing for the long term,' it means they are losing money.
Paganism is decentralized theology.
Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.
Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others.
A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment.
You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.