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Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

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
Worse
Punishing
Skepticism
Realism

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Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense
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Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.
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Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice, being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.
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Dress your best on your execution day. Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity. Do not complain.
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We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?
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I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that.
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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
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The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by the profane.
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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.
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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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Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it's closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.
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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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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.
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It's harder to say 'no' when you really mean it.
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Paul Krugman is a danger to society!
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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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Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words 'impossible', 'never', 'too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network.
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A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.
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Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
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To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.
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