Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Using
Confidence
Wittgenstein
Unless
Reliability
Use
Ruler
Also
Rulers
May
Table
Tables
Measure
More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I no longer care about the financial system. I gave them my roadmap. OK? Thanks, bye. I've no idea what's going on. I'm disconnected. I'm totally disengaged.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It's harder to say 'no' when you really mean it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by the profane.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What is nonmeasurable and nonpredictable will remain nonmeasurable and nonpredictable ... no matter how much hate mail I get.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb