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The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

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
Better
Imbecile
Even
Imbeciles
Imagines
Atheist
Proof
Imagine
Society
Empiricist
Free
Rationalist

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History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.
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Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.
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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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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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What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.
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Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it.
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If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.
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Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes.
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Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
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The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.
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What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.
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When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.
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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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They are born, put in a box they go home to live in a box they study by ticking boxes they go to what is called work in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box they talk about thinking outside the box and when they die they are put in a box.
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There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.
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Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.
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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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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.
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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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Modernity widened the distance between the sensational and the relevant.
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