In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations Nassim Nicholas Taleb More Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb More Quotes From Nassim Nicholas Taleb In politics we face the choice between warmongering, nation-state loving, big-business agents on one hand; and risk-blind, top-down, epistemic arrogant big servants of large employers on the other. But we have a choice. Nassim Nicholas Taleb top-downchoiceshands The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others. Nassim Nicholas Taleb expensesbonusbankers We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them? Nassim Nicholas Taleb derivativesbusinesswant The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine. Nassim Nicholas Taleb medicinetrackevents We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price. Nassim Nicholas Taleb banspay-the-pricerisk Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation. Nassim Nicholas Taleb agitationbeautifulpeople Any system that is deprived of its natural volatility, with government up (unintelligible) volatile, any system becomes very fragile. Nassim Nicholas Taleb volatilitygovernmentnatural Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something. Nassim Nicholas Taleb situationusedmistake Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea. Nassim Nicholas Taleb fixing-thingsdoseideas It is often the mistakes of others that benefit the rest of us and, sadly, not them ... For the antifragile, harm from errors should be less than the benefits. Nassim Nicholas Taleb benefitserrorsmistake There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small. Nassim Nicholas Taleb fuelcostuse It is much harder to become independent if you are wealthy than to become wealthy if you are independent. Nassim Nicholas Taleb harderwealthyindependent It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement. Nassim Nicholas Taleb doemightwar As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have. Nassim Nicholas Taleb errorscountrythinking It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Nassim Nicholas Taleb ignorancetogetherknowledge If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you. Nassim Nicholas Taleb bankingoutcomesnegative The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one. Nassim Nicholas Taleb utopiatwentiesfirsts The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally. Nassim Nicholas Taleb sarcasmmindloss All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options. Nassim Nicholas Taleb maximizingtechnology We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So you end up with dentists who are more traders than dentists. A dentist should drill teeth and use whatever he does in the stock market for entertainment. Nassim Nicholas Taleb entertainmentpeoplethinking
