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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)

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
Thinking
Consists
World
Complexes
Complex
Detecting
False
Ignoring
Patterns
Noticing
Intelligence
Irrelevant
Things
Avoiding
Think
Relevant

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Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.
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Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.
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Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.
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Love without sacrifice is like theft
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What is nonmeasurable and nonpredictable will remain nonmeasurable and nonpredictable ... no matter how much hate mail I get.
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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.
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Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.
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Dress your best on your execution day. Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity. Do not complain.
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An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows a journalist or consultant the opposite.
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A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
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Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.
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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.
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The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference
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There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient, and a random one. In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.
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It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
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You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.
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Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.
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The fool generalizes the particular the nerd particularizes the general some do both and the wise does neither
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The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
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