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Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.

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
Outcomes
Motive
Alternatives
Cause
Causes
Probability
Existence
Outcome
Belief
Alternative
Odds

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.
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Someone bemoaned that there were so few women in economics. But there are also very few men in economics.
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The fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn't care too much.
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Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.
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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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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.
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Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.
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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.
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My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.
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It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.
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A washing machine needs constant maintenance. It doesn't want any harm. It wants tranquility, and you need someone to - you're not going to harm it by continuously monitoring it and adjusting it.
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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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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.
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Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
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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.
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While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.
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What fools call wasting time is most often the best investment.
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The same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.
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You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
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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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