The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
von Nassim Taleb
To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it.
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing.*
Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.
In nature we never repeat the same motion; in captivity (office, gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive-stress injury. No randomness.
Economics cannot digest the idea that the collective (and the aggregate) are disproportionately less predictable than individuals.
Never say no twice if you mean it.
Nothing is more permanent than “temporary” arrangements, deficits, truces, and relationships; and nothing is more temporary than “permanent” ones.
Usually, what we call a “good listener” is someone with skillfully polished indifference.
People reserve standard compliments for those who do not threaten their pride; the others they often praise by calling “arrogant.”
If powerful assholes don’t find you “arrogant,” it means you are doing something wrong.
It is a very powerful manipulation to let others win the small battles.
People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
I went to a happiness conference; researchers looked very unhappy.
I wonder how many people would seek excessive wealth if it did not carry a measure of status with it.
I wonder if anyone ever measured the time it takes, at a party, before a mildly successful stranger who went to Harvard makes others aware of it.
Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.
Did you notice that collecting art is to hobby-painting as watching pornography is to doing the real thing? Only difference is status.
Social media are severely antisocial, health foods are empirically unhealthy, knowledge workers are very ignorant, and social sciences aren’t scientific at all.
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
Technology is at its best when it is invisible.
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 costs of specialization: architects build to impress other architects; models are thin to impress other models; academics write to impress other academics; filmmakers try to impress other filmmakers; painters impress art dealers; but authors who write to impress book editors tend to fail.
I wonder why newssuckers don’t realize that if news had the slightest predictive and nonanecdotal value journalists would be monstrously rich. And if journalists were really not interested in money they would be writing literary essays.
Half of suckerhood is not realizing that what you don’t like might be loved by someone else (hence by you, later), and the reverse.
In any subject, if you don’t feel that you don’t know enough, you don’t know enough.
To grasp the difference between Universal and Particular, consider that some dress better to impress a single, specific person than an entire crowd.
There is nothing deemed harmful (in general) that cannot be beneficial in some particular instances, and nothing deemed beneficial that cannot harm you in some circumstances. The more complex the system, the weaker the notion of Universal.
Probability is the intersection of the most rigorous mathematics and the messiest of life.
A golden saddle on a sick horse makes the problem feel worse; pomp and slickness in form make absence of substance nauseating.
To understand “progress”: all places we call ugly are both man-made and modern (Newark), never natural or historical (Rome).
Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.
Every angel is an asshole somewhere. – Every asshole is an angel somewhere.
Accept the rationality of time, never its fairness and morality.
Never buy a product that the owner of the company that makes it doesn’t use, or, in the case of, say, medication, wouldn’t contingently use.
For soldiers, we use the term “mercenary,” but we absolve employees of responsibility with “everybody needs to make a living.”
When conflicted between two choices, take neither.
Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful.
How often have you arrived one, three, or six hours late on a transatlantic flight as opposed to one, three, or six hours early? This explains why deficits tend to be larger, rarely smaller, than planned.
Just as eating cow meat doesn’t turn you into a cow, studying philosophy doesn’t make you wiser.
They agree that chess training only improves chess skills but disagree that classroom
Games were created to give nonheroes the illusion of winning. In real life, you don’t know who really won or lost (except too late), but you can tell who is heroic and who is not.
Those who can’t do shouldn’t teach.
The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination.
For the ancients, forecasting historical events was an insult to the God(s); for me, it is an insult to man—that is, for some, to science.
The ancients knew very well that the only way to understand events was to cause them.
Anyone voicing a forecast or expressing an opinion without something at risk has some element of phoniness. Unless he risks going down with the ship this would be like watching an adventure movie.
Saying “the mathematics of uncertainty” is like saying “the chastity of sex”—what is mathematized is no longer uncertain, and vice versa.
When positive, show net; when negative, show gross.
A trader listened to the firm’s “chief” economist’s predictions about gold, then lost a bundle. The trader was asked to leave the firm. He then angrily asked the boss who was firing him, “Why do you fire me alone, not the economist? He too is responsible for the loss.” The boss: “You idiot, we are not firing you for losing money—we are firing you for listening to the economist.”
Being an entrepreneur is an existential not just a financial thing.
An economist is a mixture of 1) a businessman without common sense, 2) a physicist without brains, and 3) a speculator without balls.
Journalists as reverse aphorists: my statement “you need skills to get a BMW, skills plus luck to become a Warren Buffett” was summarized as “Taleb says Buffett has no skills.”
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist.
Stiglitz understands everything about economics except for tail risks, which is like knowing everything about flight safety except for crashes.
To have a great day: 1) Smile at a stranger, 2) surprise someone by saying something unexpectedly nice, 3) give some genuine attention to an elderly person, 4) invite someone who doesn’t have many friends for coffee, 5) humiliate an economist, publicly, or create deep anxiety inside a Harvard professor.
Bring the good news in trickles, the bad news in lumps.
Contra the prevailing belief, “success” isn’t being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies.
If your beard is gray, produce heuristics but explain the “why.” If your beard is white, skip the why, just say what should be done.
For company, you often prefer those who find you interesting over those you find interesting.
At any stage, humans can thirst for money, knowledge, or love; sometimes for two, never for three.
An enemy who becomes a friend will stay a friend; a friend turned enemy will never become one.
When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they just call you arrogant.w