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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
Punishing
Skepticism
Realism
Worse

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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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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If you don't feel that you haven't read enough, you haven't read enough.
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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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Simplicity is not so simple to attain.
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What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.
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Only in recent history has working hard signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura .
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Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.
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Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
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We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.
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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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It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.
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The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.
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We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.
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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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But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time.
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Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
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People focus on role models it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up
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You never win an argument until they attack your person.
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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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It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.
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