Quote

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

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
Method
Probability
Mere
Methods
Ignorance
Odds
Development
Dealing
Knowledge
Certainty
Acceptance
Variants
Lack
Computation
Complicated
Dice

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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There is a certain category of fool-the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic scientist, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call epistemic arrogance, this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.
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Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.
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Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet.
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Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies.
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This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific 'evidence'.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries.
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To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Success is about honour, feeling morally calibrated, absence of shame, not what some newspaper defines from an external metric.
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Only in recent history has working hard signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura .
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or incentives for skill.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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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I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb