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My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism

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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Aphorism
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More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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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.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Someone who says I am busy is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Umberto Eco is the owner of a large personal library of almost 30,000 books that he has not read. [To him] read books are far less valuable than unread ones.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.
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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If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I'd rather have the market tell us what - I'd rather have events precipitate events, rather than just sit there like passive people in Washington.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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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If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Please, don’t drive a school bus blindfolded.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The number of managers with great track records in a given market depends far more on the number of people who started in the investment business (in place of going to dental school), rather than on their ability to produce profits.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb