Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

IV. SOUL IN THE GAME Finally and centrally, skin in the game is about honor as an existential commitment, and risk taking (a certain class of risks) as a separation between man and machine and (some may hate it) a ranking of humans. If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing. And I will keep mentioning that I have no other definition of success than leading an honorable life. We intimated that it is dishonorable to let others die in your stead. Honor implies that there are some actions you would categorically never do, regardless of the material rewards. She accepts no Faustian bargain, would not sell her body for $500; it also means she wouldn’t do it for a million, nor a billion, nor a trillion. And it is not just a via negativa stance, honor means that there are things you would do unconditionally, regardless of the consequences. Consider duels, which have robbed us of the great Russian poet Pushkin, the French mathematician Galois, and, of course, many more, at a young age (and, in the case of Galois, a very young age): people incurred a significant probability of death just to save face. Living as a coward was simply no option, and death was vastly preferable, even if, as in the case of Galois, one invented a new and momentous branch of mathematics while still a teenager.fn6 As a Spartan mother tells her departing son: “With it or on it,” meaning either return with your shield or don’t come back alive (the custom was to carry the dead body flat on it);...