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We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 11
Author
Economist
Essayist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Nassim Nicholas Najib Taleb
Nassim Taleb
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Chaos
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Infinite
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Precision
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Future
Phenomena
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Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies.
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We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?
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What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.
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Private equity has absolutely no reason to exist. The private equity holder has all the upside and the banks all the downside.
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They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns) in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)
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But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time.
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Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.
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When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.
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Never ask a trader if he is profitable: you can easily see it in his gesture and gait.
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Cumulative errors depend largely on the big surprises, the big opportunities. Not only do economic, financial, and political predictors miss them, but they are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish.
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If you don't feel that you haven't read enough, you haven't read enough.
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Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
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While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.
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Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice, being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.
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