Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto, #5)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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.

The principle of intervention, like that of healers, is first do no harm (primum non nocere); even more, we will argue, those who don’t take risks should never be involved in making decisions.

We have always been crazy but weren’t skilled enough to destroy the world. Now we can.

a system that doesn’t have a mechanism of skin in the game, with a buildup of imbalances, will eventually blow up and self-repair that way. If it survives.

You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding,

Evolution can only happen if risk of extinction is present.

it is harder for us to reverse-engineer than engineer;

if something stupid works (and makes money), it cannot be stupid.