179 quotes
Sometimes market data becomes a simple trap; it shows you the opposite of its nature... [e.g.,] Currencies that exhibit the largest historical stability... are the most prone to crashes.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
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.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world (2009)
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.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
At no point during his ordeal did Nero think of himself as 72% alive and 28% dead.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.
It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag, a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.
Skin in the Game (2018)
Delivering advice assumes that our cognitive apparatus rather than our emotional machinery exerts some meaningful control over our actions.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
Lucky fools do not bear the slightest suspicion that they may be lucky fools - by definition, they do not know that they belong to such a category.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
[T]he mental probabilistic map in one's mind is so geared toward the sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know....
Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world (2009)
Unlike a well-defined, precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
[W]e like to emit logical and rational ideas but we do not enjoy this execution.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
I have organized my career and business in such a way as to... benefit... I am profiting from the rare event, with asymmetric bets.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
Veteran trader Marty O'Connell calls this the firehouse effect. ...[F]iremen ...who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous...
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
There are hordes of thoughtful journalists... [I]t is just that prominent media journalism is a thoughtless process of providing the noise that captures people's attention and there exists no mechanism for separating the two.
Fooled by Randomness (2001)
It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view—and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite.
The Black Swan (2007)
I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)