nassim-nicholas-taleb Quotes About ifs

Source: The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility

“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.”

Ifs Mean Past Theory Tomorrow Opposites Data Immortal

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.”

Ifs Real Pursuit Real Life Ifs And

Book:The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.”

Ifs Feels Looks Littles Bits Little Bit If I Could

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.”

Ifs Humans War Lasts Fighting Next The Next One

Book:Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!”

Ifs Knows Sides Know How Risk Particular Six Investing Come Up Odds Bulls Dice Computation

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.”

Ifs Needs Doe Asks Knowledge Ignorance Limits Relevant Academic Haircuts Barbers

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“It is much harder to become independent if you are wealthy than to become wealthy if you are independent.”

Ifs Harder Independent Wealthy

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“If you let markets - in general, my belief is that if you let markets give you information, they'll give you the information rather than artificially prop up everything.”

Ifs Giving Belief Information Props

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“If you're going to fail, you'd rather fail early than fail late in general.”

Ifs Failing Late

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe.”

“If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.”

Ifs Hate Hate Me

Book:The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could, over your lifetime, you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other. You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. Or to rephrase, You decide principally based on fragility, not so much on True/False.”

Ifs Past Sides Realizing Decision Taken Week Consequence Lifetime Sat Over You Probability Pencils Fragility Payoff

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.”

Ifs Accepting Rich Taste Refuse Ifs And

Book:The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.”

Ifs Negative Surprise Outcomes Banking Lending

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.”

Ifs Feels Writing Two Happens Lasts Asks Social Numbers Security Lunch Social Security Manhattan Dentist Correlation

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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.”

Ifs Knows World Needs Order Perfect Economic Events Theory Models Infinite Chaos Precision Chaos Theory Future Events

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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.”

Ifs Opinion Information Evidence Weak Bases Difficulty Accurate Interpreting New Information

Book:The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility

Source: The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility

“If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”

Ifs Trying Normal Arguing Shirts Rats Economist Distribution Equilibrium Prominent

Book:The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility

Source: The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility

“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”

Ifs Ideas Running Missing Train Painful Seeking Matching Black Swan

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”

Ifs Want Poetry Poet Annoying Nerdiness

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“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”

Ifs Should Would Be Asks Differences Simple Doctors Psychologist Heuristics

Book:Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.”

Ifs Trying Mean Persons Doe Two Reason Decision Goes On Doctors Errors Obvious Employee Convince Gardener Robust Veterinarian

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter--it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up independently, for my own curiosity or purposes, and I have not done so before, then I should not be writing about it at all, period. It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it means that they should not be the source of any idea.”

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“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.”

Ifs May Use Tables Rulers Have Confidence Reliability

Book:Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative.”

Ifs Objectives Narrative Visible Justification Dictatorship Ifs And

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.”

Ifs Doe Matter Bears Succeed

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave.”

Ifs World Humans Made Shows Certain Risk Modern Research Tigers Caves Machinery Modern World Avoidance Specifics

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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.”

Ifs Knows May Suffering Party Colleagues Serendipity Envelopes Agoraphobia

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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.”

People Ifs Humans Matter Television Waste Contact Wasting Time What Matters Serendipity

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'”

Ifs Numbers Education Fronts Infinite Mathematics Versions Certainty Statistics Monkeys Typewriters Calculus Iliad

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile

“Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words 'impossible', 'never', 'too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network.”

Ifs Use Motivational Social Difficult Impossible Loser Social Network

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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.”

Ifs Trying Self Loses Fate Deserve Adversity Dresses Blame Complaining Pity Execution Exhibits Assistants Self Pity Courteous

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens-usually .”

Ifs Seems Happens Waste Unusual Ambiguous Redundancy

Book:Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act - if you can't control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.”

Ifs Lasts Dignity Outcomes Execution Behaviour Last Words Elegance Randomness Recourse

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

Ifs Fraud

Book:Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

Source: Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile

“If you don't feel that you haven't read enough, you haven't read enough.”

Ifs Feels Enough Havens

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.”

People Ifs Ideas Knowledge Ties Good Ideas Tease Forecasts

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.”

Ifs Knows Matter Courses Party Television News Newspapers Restaurants Gossip Profile Filters Cafes

Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Never ask a trader if he is profitable: you can easily see it in his gesture and gait.”

Ifs Asks Business Finance Gestures Profitable Traders Gait

Book:Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

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