YouSaid · the spoken record

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

lines on the record: 127
first: 2023-09-07
most recent: 2023-09-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“They used verbatim without following the whole argument. And they say, well, he said that. And I basically named them my names. And I went after everyone and the 20 journalists. I wrote to every journal explaining to them what I said, and I say they signed me out of context, and I wrote a chapter in Skin of the Game about how one should debate an honorable debate is where you represent the person's opinion, like what Karl Popper would always very faithfully represent the person's position, and then attack it, whereas they were taking selected. Exactly. And that for you would say, give me a letter. written by an honest man and I'll get him hell, huh? So the problem that you have with the climate that a lot of people have”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened the next day? 20 newspaper articles in the UK called Taleb Black Swan Author is a climate denier trying to convince Cameron probably how the cotton industry of modelers would be out of business if you follow these principles. So it's not like we got heat, a lot more heat from the left than from the right.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But let me tell you ironically, what happened to me the first time I formulated the argument. It's actually in the black swan, second edition, and I was with David Cameron on stage. And I said we have uncertainty about these models. So avoid these models. I just don't pollute. The paper I later rewrote with my friend Yaneer and others by saying the more uncertainty there is in a model, the more you have to be, it's just like the more uncertainty you have about the skills of the pilot, the more you're cautious you should be. Exactly. You should take another plane.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they have lobbyists in Europe. I know because they all attack me. So I see them online all the time coming from Europe, Italy, for example, Italy of all places. That's place big time reputationally if you had GMOs and Italian food in Italy. It had no tourism, but they still have people there trying to sell, particularly when you sell GMOs, you also can use more Roundup. If there's a secondary effect on the soil. And it's the same people who are producing both, right? So one could be an excuse to sell the other.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anti-science, because science, anti science, and usually they never use it by scientists. And they had a few scientists who knew nothing about risk and probability. But anyway, we had fun fighting. It was a long fight. But then what happened? They were bought by Bayer and Bayer is a little more civilized than Monsanto and then all that disappeared.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are usually dumb. Think about it who would engage with Samira Campney? The brightest person you know? No. Okay. So you can play with them. So Monsato did is to cover up for whatever they're doing via intimidation. They disrupted science and they made people believe that, hey, no evidence, I'm doing science. This person is confabulator or whatever is Luddite. You've been against the fire. No, it's not the same thing.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The R word. I got it. And then they would have 15 letters from mothers of children with special needs. Don't like that a professor at NYU would use such language that it's insulting to myself. The point is when they showed me the letters, the different names, but it was like written almost on the same. Exactly, and his language was the same. So he realized there was a smear campaign. Plus, there are a lot of other things they did, petitions, all kind of thing, and online harassment. But with me, it didn't work with others. But the people they select for these things”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And then you have a blight that spreads like COVID did the whole planet and we're much more connected than before. Plus, they have never done a proper risk study on GMOs, on the environment. Not one. They're saying there's no evidence they're harmful look people are eating it. I mean, I'm a scientist. I like to see random minds control studies. I like to see things. I like to see something a little more formal than claims. And then you don't realize what happened, no matter what you say about Monsanto, I think would be a an underestimation of their evil attribute because they really wrecked science because they had groups of people who would go and intimidate scientists and people on a salary scientists are afraid to lose their job, lose their post-op position. They would contact your boss. They would contact practically everyone. They did that to me, but visibly it was like water on the duck's back, right?”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, a vaccine is to counter a disease. GMO is just like manipulation that people said, oh, we've always manipulated animals, all right? But that's not true. It's sort of like there's a difference between flying and walking. Okay, and the risk you can encounter, you see, the GMO, the way the gene would spread through the environment, uncontrolled spread is fat-tailed, whereas selective breeding is very slow. As Rupert Reed said, he cited Nahu said that if your horse is blind, make sure you ride it slowly. So there are two classes. Mediocristan extremistan. Mediocistan, like calories versus extremistan stock market, selective breeding versus GMOs. I mean, you're jumping so many steps with GMOs. So it's a different class of risk.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It could be 20% more depending on your exposure. So saying it's an old people problem, they were dying as a multiple of their mortality rate. So I took the Social Security numbers just to say, okay, it's not my numbers, Social Security numbers, look at it. If you're female, 30-year-old, you have 1 in 700 chance of dying, male, 1 in 400 chance of dying, that goes up by 10% with COVID. If you're 80 years old, you have one in whatever, it goes up by 10% or say, I mean, the 10% depends on the exposure period, but it was almost flat across the population. So I said, okay, do you want to increase your children's chance or young people's chance of death by X percent? Plus, the effect it has on years lost and life expectancy is much more dramatic for a 40-year-old than it is for a 90-year-old.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it went up from COVID across the board in the same way. Say, for example, you're exposed to COVID, you have 10% chance of mortality, 1.1%, 10% increase in or cold mortality. The same for young people. So past the age of 30, it's about the same number.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The risk of death, or your multiple of death beyond the age of thirty, because we don't have much of an effect for younger people, or we don't think so, the force of mortality.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kudu is bad cow disease. Things for which we have data of early exposure and then early disease, only onset of disease. So I looked at vaccines with all these conspiracy theorists and everything. The focus is enormous and we can see anything. But it followed that class of risks where you have to have mistakes go and take a place in a genetic or DNA. This is where after a billion jabs, I said, okay, I'm going to go for it. And visibly the risk is much smaller. It's a risk may exist, but it's much smaller than the risk of COVID. And plus there are a lot of numbers about COVID, people who aren't aware of. Number one, something that people didn't think about immediately, that COVID raised”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Number of mutations to take place to cause a problem, they have a variance. And if they have a variance, it's as follows. You would see already in a billion people, because there's so much scrutiny, you would see that tailor risk. To give you an example, Hiroshima, they say on average took 10 years to or eight years, whatever to get cancer. No, we saw it in three months, four months. If you focus on the tail, same as Kuru, Kuru takes about 10 years on average, the median to get Kuru from exposure, but you have...”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In comparison to that. Plus, very quickly, after about a billion people had jabs, I was initially skeptical about a vaccine in the sense that let's wait and see. The story is are there other ways? Because I'm really worried about COVID and people don't understand that the argument they use exposed. COVID is much more dangerous than you think. And the vaccine is what made it. When had a billion chaps, I showed the following thing, that everything's that genetic”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me tell you what the problem is we're not with the vaccines. There are two things number one. Someone takes a vaccine and you have part of population, they'll have the vaccine, it's not affected. But there's something more central here. You're comparing two risks. We have COVID versus a vaccine. So you have to compare and we know a lot more about genetic stuff in an individual than we know about how genes spread in a population. And that vaccine story, basically the beginning say, why don't you exercise the precautionary principle? I say, I have to worry about a pandemic a lot more.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our ideas because it was racist against China. They could not distinguish between risks of car accidents and heart attacks and risks of things spreading. This is why, for example, I am in favor of vaccines. The risk is entailed, and I'm against GMOs because they spread in the environment.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, it's like with you and the eggs, all right? So to go back to the insurable, we don't have to worry about it. And a very simple example I gave that when Ebola started and later on when COVID started, people were using the arguments, yeah, you know, 3,000 Americans die every year drowning in the swimming pool. That was something by a guy called Dr. Phil. Should we shut down pools at a time less than a thousand Americans had died of COVID? And then I followed this, presented the following argument. I said, if I die drowning in a swimming pool, my neighbor drowning in her or his swimming pool has not changed. If I die of COVID, the odds of my neighbor die of COVID has increased. So you had that transmission that makes it fat tailed. That mechanism of transmission. So this is why you cannot compare as basically the press in the beginning, these so-called established press, was against”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was written with him first drinking in English and in English pub in somewhere in Northern England where the portions are like smaller than what they give you for espresso in Italy, you know, the espresso, like you sip them. So we had to have like...”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bingo, and let me tell you how. For example, if cancer is entails, nuclear. If you could diversify it, it's Sentails. If you can have a thousand nuclear reactors, all right. If you can ensure it rather than one, it is entailed. If you can ensure it's Sintail, if you can't insure it, non-insurable, fat tails. So a lot of things that are believed to be very risky, but they're not like nuclear for me. I mean, not for one of my co-authors, but I'll settle it with him with a beer. What's in English?”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say, I go 3,000 for me, all right? I can play with fat and stuff, 3,000. That's nothing. How many calories do I consume a year? Not a single day is going to make a difference. Can you lose all your money in a single We go. So you have two environments and they're separable. So, this is why the universal approach that makes things separable. The fact that you can identify what is fat-tailed, you identify where models don't work, and can identify where you have to understand, and we have to use more refined tools to figure out stuff. And then also in fatness of tails, number one, pandemics. Number two, wars, close, close second. Wars and pandemics.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Financial markets and why it's getting thicker. Fat tails means that you have the greatest contribution comes from smallest number of events. So concentration, like for example, you have a lot of people, all the wealth come from one person. It so happened that under fat tails, the models that we use for risk management on Wall Street, RBS, this is why I have a lot of enemies. This is why I have to protect myself against reputational damage, all right? Because all the economists saved me. All their models are based on that. So what is fatal? Practically everything is socioeconomic life is fat tailed. What is not fat tailed? Number of calories we're going to eat tonight. How many calories can we have in one day, tonight?”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There'd be a running error. There'd be a running error. I mean, they'd be on average. Planet Earth, all right, that'd be in total, maybe they have two or three million in total, and then you have 100 and some billion right next to it. So this is where you have to focus on environment that produce these fat tails. And this is what Mark did, Universa. Inversa is named after the universal mechanism that generates fat tails. That was the name of the cut. So everything were in it, basically, intellectually everything, all details. So you have to identify what produces fat tails.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are environments where you may have a large deviation that's not going to be consequential because it can't be very big. So if I take a thousand people and put them on a scale and add to that sample, Largest human being can file on a planet, how much of the total will he or she represent? It's 30 basis points, nothing okay. And then if you go from a thousand to ten thousand, dilutes completely. So you can have a tail event that's not going to be consequential. Extremistan is different. Extremistan, if you gather a thousand people and add to that sample the wealthiest person on the planet, How much of the total will he or she represent?”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Need fat tails. Now, what does fat tail mean? Let me explain to you. Let's say you go to planet Mars, okay? Elon would help you get there. You have connection. And you have no news from Earth. And then on the way back, you hear that a billion people died. Which one is more likely to be the cause Ebola or car accidents? Ebola. On a given day, if you hear Joe Smith died today, what's more likely Ebola or a car accident? That's fat tails. Fat tails. You have to identify things backwards. If you hear of a big thing, where did it come from? Then you had to get these. So they have different dynamics because they scale differently. So in the black swan, I show the difference with the following metaphor.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would you drink it? No. There's no evidence that. But when you tell him, hey, you know, you should worry about GMOs, there's no evidence they're harmful. Yeah, but there's no evidence that they're not harmful. So the asymmetry where you put the burden of the asymmetry on, that's a precautionary principle. But then what we did is we've noticed a lot of people, in fact, it was a counter. precautionary principle because a lot of people were invoking it for nothing to say we're going to have a non-naive precautionary principle by delineating The are Where you should exercise such precaution systematically as a planet or as a communal group? And what are the number one”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You take a train, you'll take a, you walk, maybe you ride a bicycle, you know, take a few months, but you're not going to get on that plane. You change your plans and say, okay, there are other plans or other countries too and other planes. Warren Buffett and his investments, and that's Microsoft principle, the idea that there's an asymmetry, and there's uncertainty about certain things is not good. So the climate, for example, if you have uncertainty about the climate, stop these models or try to use something else, try to mitigate. So that's the first part of it. And people get it right away when I give them a story or a plane or I take water. This is glass of water on the table. There's no evidence that it's poisonous”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, let me ask you your flying to go to Mexico. You go to JFK and they tell you they have uncertainty about the skills of the pilot. But we think he's good, but there's uncertainty. What do you do? You're not going to get on that flame. I'm not going to get, okay, life is too important for me.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sage of Omaha has something that I didn't put in the precautionary principle. But that's probably very inspiring because he understood the asymmetry. If you say no a thousand times, he says no if he doubts. And that's a precautionary principle.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Intellectual work and who happens to have had contact with reality thanks to trading and thanks to Mark and guys I still have some contact with reality. But I'm not cut for that. When I was writing food by Renz, it was 2019 that I realized I was not, I don't want to be like Soros because unlike Buffett and the other people, Soros had an identity crisis. He wants to be known as a philosopher. That's not, you know, and life to control of him.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, it was not, it was not, you know, it was not what he wanted out of life. He's a Middle European intellectual who would have liked to be remembered as someone for ideas. And he envied, of course, Karl Popper, who he claims he was his professor, but it was beyond. So I wrote Modern Fool by Randomness. I said, here's this fellow who is saying, okay, but he also does to distinguish himself from other financiers. He's also or has intellectual aims. I said, I don't want to be there. I want to be someone who produces.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wrote about it in Fort Byronis. Georges Soros, and I met George Soros, one of the persons on the planet who oppressed me the most. One of those. And I realized that George Soros, Missed his career. He wanted to be a philosopher and thinker. Okay, he ended up making money and spending too much time in it and wrote drunk articles and books, or at least one book.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To not be portrayed to mention that I don't self identify as a finance person. And once he made that promise, okay, I said, okay, now we can talk because finance represents a significant part of my life.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finoza came very sceptical, he was skeptical about the text that was, these people say, okay, Trescendi's text, okay, be skeptical about things that really matter. And there was actually a skeptical school of medicine practicing medicine. So what? I went back through history. Every time I've had an idea, I would go back and see in history who preceded me. And sure enough, I haven't done enough because every year or so I get a letter from someone. Hey, how come you missed so-and-so? And sure enough, I go back to the inserto and I add that person. And this is why it has survived the five books, the inserto. But we're not here to talk about these five books, but this book.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In France or among Protestants in France and what's called the Fidiists originates of course in Levant and of course you have the great Al-Ghazal, the Islamic theologian Iranian origin who definitely was showing you how all these arguments are weak could dismantle arguments be skeptical about human arguments about God more than a spinozo”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not skeptical of God and things anyway can't do anything about. They were skeptical of the Charlatan. They're skeptical of things of someone trying to take advantage of you. That's where you exercise your skepticism. Among the great skeptics, there is a bishop UA. He was probably one of the second most erudite persons of his time. Second was Skaliger. The guy is phenomenal. He could translate into Arabic. He was Roman authors. Latin authors and vice versa, okay, Scaliger, Skadigeri. There are a lot of Pierre Bale. Pierre Bale has a lot of works. He's one of those skeptics. Hume was one of those skeptics, but these people preceded Hume. Hume is known because he wrote a language of a country that had a lot of ships and a lot of trade across the world. But a lot of these ideas came from groups of people.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big thing, like let me give you an example I wrote a paper, it never ended up in a book on the stock market and religion. It's called The Bishop and the Economist. And I said that those who are skeptical about the existence of God, the non-existence of God are skeptical about religious matters, typically tend to be complete suckers when it comes to stocks. They believe in a stock market or believe in some kind of pseudoscientific theory on whatever it is. But they don't believe in religion and the reverse, all right? And people who are religious typically, they're harder and there's some, I don't know, research on that. There's a guy called Barlakhmi Bar Halachi, I think, who did some studies about skepticism. People go to religion about affairs. Skepticism where it matters. And I wrote about it, I think, in the Black Swanson. Skepticism where it matters. And I noticed that a lot of these big skeptics”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are skeptical of particularly conspiracy theories. They're skeptical of small things. But not about big ones. All right. They got taken for a ride. Find me a conspiracy theorist or find me someone who's naturally skeptical of all things and I show you a turkey. So I wanted to find people who are fundamentally skeptic, being skeptic, being skeptic about important things, not about small things.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's actually, I was, I started liking the Stoics, and those people I've talked about, I like them much earlier on in my life. But I went overboard for every idea I've had. I did the exact opposite of what one should do is like if you had an idea, say, oh, I had this idea, right? Is go look because I don't consider myself so different from others. And then particularly when you look at history, so many tens and thousands survive scholars surviving works. I went back and figured out of the scholars of these scholars who had similar ideas or who preceded the ideas. And who started thinking like that? So I went into the empirics, the eastern Mediterranean Greco Levantine, Greco-Roman, mostly using Greek language thinkers. And then, of course, to others about this fundamental skepticism. Because I noticed a lot of people...”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he met the financier at the time for hedge funds. And the financier said, what is it that about you, who was an author, a very successful one, what is it that distinguishes you from me, you know? Look, he told him, I know the meaning of enough. So in other words, you know your upper bound. And effectively, I don't play that game. I say there's meaning literally, and I say envious of people who are erudite. Like if someone knows Latin very well, I'm envious. If someone knows Sanskrit, I'm envious, right? And I discovered that early on. So I made money on Wall Street because I wanted to make money on Wall Street, but I didn't think it was worth the effort. And luckily it was a combination of Universal. I had so much leverage, you know, was marked on all this stuff that said the spillover on me was...”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You had to figure out what people envious of. So, you know, if you're in a hedge fund business and you have 500 million dollars in a bank and someone else has $600 million, you're going to be envious of that person. I was always envious if people had more erudition than me. Okay, so more erudites. And you realize that that's what makes me tick. Being envious is not good. If you figure out I don't believe in this. They say, oh, people having enough. There's someone here from East Hampton, the fellow who wrote Cash 22.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a confrontation in nature, it's independence. I mean, people say I'm contrarian. I'm with a conspiracy theorist on many things. I'm against them on many other things. Some are just contrarian because they have a father problem. So to me, a contrarian is an explicit rather than an attribute. But the other thing is I thought it's got to be about me. It should be about the idea, the precaution.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Use as guideline. It's the same thing. So accept that there's something in between there's some people care about and I want them to not lose respect for me. Of course you start with your mother, have your children or whatever your family members. But there are also a lot of people on the planet and I care about mathematics. But in these circles, not with the general public. So it allows you to take much, much more aggressive positions, which I've done over a long life. And Mark, for example, has a lot of enemies. And they're going to pick on something and they don't care. They're doing the right things. And how do you know they're doing the right thing if people you respect approve of your action Not as the general public”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Try to explain what it's about and it has worked out. But if you have to go defend your reputation and you're doing the right thing, it's too much energy wasted and it's not going to help. Haters are going to hate. This resembles another aphorism inspired by Charlie Munger's Charlie Mungers is that you want to be the most ethical person what people think that you're corrupt or you want to be the most corrupt person or people think that you're ethical. Make your choice.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe because I was never really someone who established ideas at face value. So you necessarily have Know violates some norms. So I'm thinking norms. And often people protect those norms by, you know, attacking a reputation. And I realize that while writing fool by randomness, I say, hey, you're saying that what I'm doing is random. We're using the wrong models. These don't work. So they attack your reputation. So I realized quickly it was time that my reputation was going to be under some kind of fire. And I decided that no, my reputation is how few important people or people who know something about the subject. Me. And it's not like I don't care my reputation, I only care about reputation in some circles, and it was people I can talk to.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was One thing is actually, I recommend people do that. I wrote that, but not on the day I started, but I recommended that people, because you feel relief when you do it, because then you can continue on your job without feeling like someone's controlling you.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly what I call pseudo optimization. Like if you drive a Ferrari 500 kilometers per hour, you're not going to get there faster than if you ride a bicycle. Because all of a sudden you're never going to get”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Instead of being diversified, what did that lead to, right? Okay, better bottom line, but what I call pseudo efficiency because they short that option. And it so happened that if their supplier is in Wuhan, guess what? You got a problem, all right? But that problem doesn't show in the numbers. It shows after it happens.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An annual bonus. So, this I call the generalized Bob Rubin trade. Generalized Robert Rubin trade. He made $100 million at Citibank or Citicor City or something over 10 years, about 10 years. He collected $100 million compensation. The bank was insolvent in 2008, near insolvent, if it weren't for taxpayer, and it was the last minute. All he had to do was write an apology letter. We didn't see these events. It was a black swan named after a book by a very, very stubborn man or something like that. So that's all you have to do is say, I'm sorry, right? You keep your bonus. You don't show up to work. So this you can generalize. It's the same thing with supply chain. With the supply chain, a lot of firms concentrated everything on one supplier.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They just don't have to do that. They could just avoid some trade. But let me explain to you the dynamics of the bonus system. This led to my book skin in a game later on. If you have skin in a game, you're going to worry about blow-up because it's your money. If you don't have skin in a game, your CEO of a company or your fund manager and any kind of financial venture, what is your incentive? is to print good numbers because you don't pay for the downside. So you print good numbers, you collect money on the profits.”
2023-09-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #691: Nassim N. Taleb & Scott Patterson — How Traders Make Billions in The New Age of Crisis, Defending Against Silent Risks, Personal Independence, Skepticism Where It (Really) Counts, The Bishop and The Economist, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT