179 quotes
I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
Mixing forecast and prophecy is symptomatic of randomness-foolishness...
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment and make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race.
Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
From the standpoint of an institution, the existence of a risk manager has less to do with actual risk reduction than it has to do with the impression of risk reduction.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
There is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive (unless he acted in a cowardly manner)—likewise there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur or failed scientific researcher ...
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
I suddenly felt insecure and feared becoming an employee of some firm that would turn me into a corporate slave with "work ethics" (whenever I hear the word work ethics I interpret inefficient mediocrity).
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001)
[I]n academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world, there is.
Skin in the Game (2018)
Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.
Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. 'Educated philistines' have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets.
Skin in the Game (2018)
For me, history is of use... by being able to steal the ideas of others and leverage them, correct the mental defect that seems to block my ability to learn from others.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001)
Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
[N]ever engage in detailed overexplanations of why something is important: one debases a principle by endlessly justifying it.
Skin in the Game (2018)
[A] theory is a very dangerous thing to have.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)