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16a7e10
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What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.
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dating-advice
modern-life
men-and-women
dating
internet
modernity
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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40591dd
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Further, my characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn't introspect, doesn't exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on. These types often consider themselves the "victims" of some large plot, a bad boss, or bad weather. Finally, a thought. He who has never sinned is less reliable than he w..
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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2c2601e
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Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated--the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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71c60e3
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The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination
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criticism
imagination
genius-stupidity
nerdery
critics
art
genius
nerds
nerd
artist
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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4e764aa
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The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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80b3395
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Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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2199574
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He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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1e796db
|
To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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b4e588b
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Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries,
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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9c33e1f
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Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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5810040
|
Ideas come and go, stories stay.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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0e65742
|
true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing
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humbleness
narcissists
true-humility
narcissism
humility
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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bae5cef
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The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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07b04df
|
Only the autodidacts are free.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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8e6a1dd
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I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.
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theory
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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b7baf78
|
I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent...Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patently intellectually defective ones, like the former U.S. president George W. Bush, who score high on them (130), are testing the test and not the reverse.
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intelligence
wisdom
iq
wisdom-vs-nerds
nerdiness
nerds
nerd
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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3b19053
|
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.
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lesson-for-life
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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ff0672c
|
The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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e27d733
|
Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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ec2190f
|
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.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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60df948
|
The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren't for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn't so when stripped of personal risks.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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56088a6
|
I am most often irritated by those who attack the bishop but somehow fall for the securities analyst--those who exercise their skepticism against religion but not against economists, social scientists, and phony statisticians. Using the confirmation bias, these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed..
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religion
stalinism
nationalism
skepticism
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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7ae3b20
|
Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I'd rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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aba0ff1
|
In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations
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politics
corporate-ethics
corporatism
government-corruption
inside-job
washington-dc-politics
corporations
corruption
washington-dc
government
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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51c09dc
|
The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death
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fear
religion
modern
modern-life
modernity-is-sickness
modern-values
evangelism
narcissism
modernity
values
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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8874c7b
|
If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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d37b1b3
|
By all means, avoid words--threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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e8574a0
|
Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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457b2a4
|
Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending
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banking
expertise
experts
recessions
recession
economics
finance
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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bc7f2ed
|
Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have--or don't have--in their portfolio.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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94a218b
|
Believe me, it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure. We are social animals; hell is other people.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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7eb723d
|
I don't run for trains." Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expec..
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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791bf0c
|
I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and ..
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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1219f34
|
that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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6c2642a
|
The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So 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 strategy is, then, to tinker as much ..
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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788d53a
|
Never ask a man if he is from Sparta: If he were, he would have let you know such an important fact - and if he were not, you could hurt his feelings.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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7e42b35
|
Steve Jobs: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things."
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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dcc2565
|
We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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4d27543
|
Avoidance of boredom is the only worthy mode of action. Life otherwise is not worth living.)
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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143e7e2
|
What matters isn't what a person has or doesn't have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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6fc3875
|
Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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42299b3
|
Curiosity is antifragile, like an addiction, and is magnified by attempts to satisfy it--books have a secret mission and ability to multiply, as everyone who has wall-to-wall bookshelves knows well.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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9be159b
|
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
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slavery
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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9597a9e
|
No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb |