Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent 21 years as a risk taker before becoming a researcher in philosophical, mathematical, and (mostly) practical problems with probability.
He is the author of the Incerto, a five-volume philosophical essay on uncertainty.
12 timeless wisdom from Nassim Taleb 🧵
1) “If you change your mind too frequently, it suggests that you do not think carefully and responsibly before formulating an opinion & don’t know when to remain silent or neutral.
If you never change your mind on anything, it indicates that you are an intellectually dishonest.”
2) “There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.”
3) “The opposite of education is not ignorance; it is education in social science.”
4) “To see if a book is real, ask 10 people of different backgrounds & professions to summarize it. If the summaries are similar, the book will not survive as it can be shortened to a journal article.
The more the summaries diverge, the higher the dimensionality of the book.”
5) “Missing a train is only painful if you run after it!
Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”
6) “The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.”
7) “A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”
8) “It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known.
Namely that our highest currency is respect.”
9) “A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there.”
10) “Changing your mind once about a theory, an investment, or a person, is healthy. Changing your mind twice is not.”
11) “Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.”
12) “What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.”
ekoshapu 
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