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The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is whether financial and political news makes sense to him.

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
Makes
Test
Political
Tests
Someone
Financial
Best
News
Stupid
Wise
Whether
Sense
Extremely

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I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.
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Simplicity is not so simple to attain.
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I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.
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We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.
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While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.
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Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum
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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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When I trade, I don't have an agency problem I have my neck on the line. When a bank or banker trades, it's not his neck on the line.
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Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.
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I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are.
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I remind myself of Einstein's remark that common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age 18.
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Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.
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My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism
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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 traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
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Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
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A competitive athlete is painful to look at trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.
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Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich.
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Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.
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We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible we scorn the abstract.
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