Reddit mentions of Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

I started Skin in the Game the other day after reading a couple blog posts about it and, wow, I think Taleb is probably the most cutting intellectual alive today.

He seems to have no interest in being liked and it further seems like 30% of the time he's actively trying to make the reader dislike him. Which helps make me love him.

It feels like the world is completely awash in pandering assholes lately and it's refreshing to not feel like I'm being told what to think or how to feel in a world of article titles that end in "here's why it matters" like I need to be told what to think matters and why.

Some interesting stuff from the book:

>An honest person will never commit criminal acts, but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.

.

>If you want to show that a person has more than, say $ 10 million, all you need is to show the $ 50 million in his brokerage account, not, in addition, list every piece of furniture in his house, including the $ 500 painting in his study and the silver spoons in the pantry. So I’ve discovered, with experience, that when you buy a thick book with tons of graphs and tables used to prove a point, you should be suspicious. It means something didn’t distill right! But for the general public and those untrained in statistics, such tables appear convincing— another way to substitute the true with the complicated.

.

>The market is like a large movie theater with a small door. And the best way to detect a sucker is to see if his focus is on the size of the theater rather than that of the door.

.

>my heuristic is that the more pagan, the more brilliant one’s mind, and the higher one’s ability to handle nuances and ambiguity. Purely monotheistic religions such as Protestant Christianity, Salafi Islam, or fundamentalist atheism accommodate literalist and mediocre minds that cannot handle ambiguity.

Momentan citesc Growing Gourmet Medicinal Mushrooms. :)

Inainte de ea am terminat 12 Rules for Life.

Urmatoarea probabil o sa fie Skin in the game.


> Bonus: Cartea preferata.

Nu prea mai am o carte preferata. Sunt mai multe aflate la nivelul maxim din varii motive si nu prea pot alege intre ele.

"The Gift" a lui Hafiz si "Felicity" a lui Mary Oliver sunt doua carti de poezie care mi-au placut enorm si pe care le pot recomanda fara ezitare. :)