Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

How is it that maximally intolerant minorities run the world and impose their taste on us? How does universalism destroy the very people it means to help? How is it that we have more slaves today than we did during Roman times? Why shouldn’t surgeons look like surgeons? Why did Christian theology keep insisting on a human side for Jesus Christ that is necessarily distinct from the divine? How do historians confuse us by reporting on war, not peace? How is it that cheap signaling (without anything to risk) fails equally in economic and religious environments? How do candidates for political office with obvious character flaws seem more real than bureaucrats with impeccable credentials? Why do we worship Hannibal? How do companies go bust the minute they have professional managers interested in doing good? How is paganism more symmetrical across populations? How should foreign affairs be conducted? Why should you never give money to organized charities unless they operate in a highly distributive manner (what is called Uberized in modern lingo)? Why do genes and languages spread differently? Why does the scale of communities matter (a community of fishermen turns from collaborative to adversarial once one moves the scale, that is the number of people involved, a notch)? Why does behavioral economics have nothing to do with the study of the behavior of individuals—and markets have little to do with the biases of participants? How is rationality survival and survival only? Wha...