Book

The Bed of Procrustes

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes—An

(25 total)

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (25)

“When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they just call you arrogant.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Arrogance, Intelligence

“The rules you explain are less convincing than the ones you don’t explain—or have to explain.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Implicit Systems of Governance, The Way Things Rule , Articulation, What Is Left Unsaid, The Secret of Secrey

“Never take investment advice from someone who has to work for a living.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Investment, Banking, Stocks

“Money corrupts those who talk (and write) about it more than those who earn it.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Money, Cash, Virtual Reality of Judgement

“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).”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Pattern Recognition, Intelligence

“It takes a lot of intellect and confidence to accept that what makes sense doesn’t really make sense.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Against Logic, The Bigness of the World, Ever-Expanding Knowledge Systems

“Trust those who are greedy for money a thousand times more than those who are greedy for credentials.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Credentialism , Greed

“To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Epistemology, Understanding How Things Work, Reverse Engineering

“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.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Medieval Times, Modernity, Modern Times

“Failure-resistant is achievable; failure-free is not.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Failure

“Many are so unoriginal they study history to find mistakes to repeat.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: History, Irony

“Literature comes alive when covering up vices, defects, weaknesses, and confusions; it dies with every trace of preaching.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: When Art Preaches, Moralism In Literature

“Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: neurobiology, Missing The Bigger Picture, Examples of Similes

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Against Technology , The Slavery of Technology

“When people say, 'I am investing for the long term,' it means they are losing money.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Investing, Investment

“Paganism is decentralized theology.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Paganism

“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Nerds, charm, Dangers of Charm

“Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Self-Deception, Narrative Fallacy

“A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Stay Young, Heroic Outlook

“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, amazon.com

Tagged: Against Newspapers, Against The Media, Media Madness