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Quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book challenges traditional notions of resilience and fragility, arguing that certain systems and individuals benefit from disorder and volatility. It examines the principles of antifragility across multiple disciplines, providing insights into how to navigate uncertainty and chaos effectively. more

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a renowned author, scholar, and thinker whose unique perspective and profound insights have had a wide-reaching impact in fields such as finance, statistics, and philosophy. He is best known for his books 'The Black Swan' and 'Fooled by Randomness', which have explored the nature of uncertainty, risk, and probability theory. more

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“True wisdom is acquired by the person who sees patterns, and comes to understand those patterns in their connection to other patterns - and from these interconnected patterns, learns the code of life - and from the learning of the code of life, becomes a co-creator with God.”

“Our very nature is truth. It is because of truth that we exist, and it is to truth that we return. It is true, everything about you as you are this echo of infinity. The heartbeat of nature is in you, and you are a pattern of truth as love beats through you.”

“Disclosures that quantify climate risks can help realign decision-making towards building a resilient climate economy. This creates positive feedback loops to drive further adaptive measures.”

“Ecosystems are complex networks. They can be remarkably resilient under stress, but when certain key nodes begin to fail, knock-on effects reverberate through the web of life. This is how mass extinction events unfolded in the past. It’s not the external shock that does it – the meteor or the volcano: it’s the cascade of internal failures that follows. It can be difficult to predict how this kind of thing plays out. Things like tipping points and feedback loops make everything much riskier than it otherwise might be. This is what makes climate breakdown so concerning.”

“Stairway of desires Loving you feels like loving my own desires, All of them; and this feeling of loving my own desires, Feels like a stairway of unending passions and wishes, Where you and your love is the only wish of all my wishes, As my heart climbs these steps, one at a time, I wish the stairs never ended, for loving you is the loveliest time, And when every step gets me closer to you, I suddenly miss you, and I sink in the feeling of loving you without you, For these might be the steps of desires and passions, But as long as they do not arise from you they are only lesser passions, Which feel red, like the most beautiful red rose, But what is a red rose worth if it doesn't smell like a rose, So, I have stopped climbing the staircase of passions and desires, Because they lead to a conduit feeling which is alien to my love’s true desires, And if it continues like this, it will become my pernicious act, Where I will forever be climbing the steps of desires, because it can be a never ending act, A staircase of passions and desires can last forever, So let me stop on the step where I am now, and love you as if there were no forever, There were just this step and just this moment, we call now, Let me know you today, just like I had known you yesterday, only to love you in better ways now, For who knows where the staircase might lead, But I am sure, my wishes and all my desires, just unto you lead, To you, to your heart, to your desires too, And let me wait to hear that you feel the same too, My penitent heart beats tirelessly, as if it has been cursed to throb endlessly, Just to seek that one wish, one desire, that it loves so endlessly, It created subsequent ripples of desires to keep finding a reason to throb, The reason to love you Irma, is what you shall find if you probe the melody of my heart’s every throb, So here I am standing on the stairway that is made of my desires and endless wishes, Where every step is nothing but a representation of my desires arising from my wishes, The wishes that seek you in everything, Even in the fire that kills the moth, because the fire of passions burns brighter than everything, Brighter than all stars, brighter than the moon too, You would indeed feel the same when you fall in love, and someday you shall too!”

“What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce these risks, and humanity survives the next few centuries, our descendants or successors could end these risks by spreading through this galaxy. Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”