The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.
Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.
Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.
If you don’t feel that you haven’t read enough, you haven’t read enough.
Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.
The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.
The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither.
Bankers, they’re not harmed by their mistakes. They benefit when things go right, and the society pays the price.
If you’re going to fail, you’d rather fail early than fail late in general.
Switzerland is the perfect place where you have volatility at a municipal level that nothing up top – small units competing with each other.
Political life loves some volatility.
Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something.
You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.
Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it’s closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.
A washing machine needs constant maintenance. It doesn’t want any harm. It wants tranquility, and you need someone to – you’re not going to harm it by continuously monitoring it and adjusting it.
Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.
The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.
The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.
I’d rather have the market tell us what – I’d rather have events precipitate events, rather than just sit there like passive people in Washington.
People work out, they stress their body, and their body gets stronger from stress.
There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small.