Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

They can’t get the idea that, empirically, complex systems do not have obvious one-dimensional cause-and-effect mechanisms, and that under opacity, you do not mess with such a system.

The same mechanism of transferring risk also impedes learning.

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, or better at explaining than doing.

Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.

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

Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk

What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.

People whose survival depends on qualitative “job assessments” by someone of higher rank in an organization cannot be trusted for critical decisions.

It is no secret that large corporations prefer people with families; those with downside risk are easier to own, particularly when they are choking under a large mortgage.

Intellectual and ethical freedom requires the absence of the skin of others in one’s game, which is why the free are so rare.