Nero pitted himself against the newly formed technology companies with negative cash flows that the crowd was crazy about.

Despite the fact that Nero succeeded in business even beyond his wildest dreams, he began to believe that he had missed his chance somewhere.

Our consciousness does not have sufficient means to cope with probability. Such weakness is common even to experts, and sometimes only to experts.

What comes, which cannot be attributed solely to luck, is more resistant to chance.

It is clear that you cannot function normally if you doubt everything; and you can’t survive if you trust everything.

Nero was convinced that this man was arrogant and empty-headed, and he succeeded only because he never made allowance for his vulnerability.

No matter how confident businessmen may be, they are often brought to their senses by reminders of the gap between idea and result, between accurate models and reality.

I start with a banal thought: you cannot judge achievements in any field (war, politics, pharmacy, investment) by results, you should start with the cost of alternatives.

The tactics of Nero and his friends - investors of various profiles - were different. Nero was not dependent on a bull market, and therefore did not have to worry about a bear market at all. He does not risk his savings, investing them in the safest instruments - treasury bonds.

Over the years, your knowledge and your library will grow, and the thickening rows of unread books will begin to look at you menacingly. In fact, the broader your horizons, the more shelves of unread books you have. Let's call this collection of unread books an anti-library.

Although the result is obvious, you do not see what gives impetus to the course of events - their generator.

History is impenetrable. Although the result is obvious, you do not see what gives impetus to the course of events - their generator. Your perception of history is inherently incomplete, because you are not given the opportunity to look inside the box and understand the workings of the mechanism. What I call the generator of historical events is not visible in the events themselves - just as their intentions are not discernible in the actions of the gods.

The rarer the event, the less accurately we can estimate the degree of its probability - even within the Gaussian framework.

The main thing here is not even that we are mistaken in forecasts about our future happiness, but that we do not take into account our past experience every time.

Mathematics is not just a “game of numbers”, it is a way of thinking. You will see that probability is a quality subject.

The high-yield market is like sleeping on railroad tracks: at some point, an unexpected train will run over you.

History does not reveal its thoughts to us - we must guess them.

No event in the financial markets can take that away from him. Each of his losses is limited to a certain amount, and nothing will ever threaten his dignity as a trader.

By justifying ourselves by saying that others lacked common sense, we thereby admit that we lack it in ourselves.

But there is one area where I think the common practice of mistaking luck for skill is prevalent and glaring: the world of financial trading.

The double curse of modern civilization: it makes us grow old earlier and live longer.

Unfortunately, some people play the game too seriously and search for meaning in many things.

By analogy, an increase in personal achievement (whether caused in a deterministic manner or with the assistance of Lady Fortune) stimulates an increase in serotonin in the subject, causing what is commonly called the ability to lead.

Excess (when understood as savings stored under the mattress) is inherently the opposite of debt. Psychologists teach that if you become rich, you will not achieve happiness if you spend your savings. But if you hide them under your mattress, you are less vulnerable to a Black Swan.

He also carefully monitors situations where he could lose, say, $1,000,000, regardless of the likelihood of such an event. The size of this amount constantly varies depending on the accumulated profit for the year.

Trading makes you think hard. Those who rely only on hard work usually lose their sense of smell and intellectual energy.

Obviously, catastrophic events are not included in the statistics, since the survival of the variable itself is based on such an effect. Therefore, distributions based on such data cause the observer to overestimate stability and underestimate potential risk and volatility.

Recall something from the discussion of Mediocristan in Chapter 3: no single observation affects the outcome. And this property will become more and more important as the population you are considering increases in size. The averages will stabilize more and more, until eventually the most diverse samples will be as similar as two peas in a pod.

To outdo everyone, you need to come up with an idea that is unlikely to occur to the current generation of restaurateurs. It should be completely unexpected. The less predictable the success of such an enterprise, the fewer competitors it has and the greater the likely profit. The same applies to the shoe business or the book business - or, in fact, to any business. The same applies to scientific theories - no one is interested in listening to platitudes. The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.

Anyone who is looking for confirmation will not be slow to find it - in sufficient quantity to deceive himself and, of course, his colleagues.

Ultimately, randomness is just ignorance. The world is opaque and appearances confuse us.

We know all this. Nothing is perfect. It's reasonable to assume. There is no harm in guessing. It is natural to assume. You cannot prove that it is wrong to assume. We only do what everyone else does. Those who make decisions are better off with us than without us.

We take segments from the overall picture of what we see and, by generalizing them, draw conclusions about the unseen: this is confirmation bias.

The way you deal with Black Swans is to shield yourself from the negative (or open up to the positive), even if you have no evidence that they might show up, just as when boarding a plane we check to see if the passengers are carrying weapons, even though they do not. We have no evidence that they are terrorists.

Bookshelves are filled with biographies of successful men and women, presenting their explanations of how they achieved great things in life (we have an expression for this: “at the right time in the right place,” to weaken any conclusions they draw).

The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believed him.

Can we judge people's success by their appearance and personal wealth? Sometimes we can, but not always.

Ask a profitable investor to explain the reasons for his success, and he will offer a deep and compelling interpretation of his results. Often such misconceptions are intentional and deserve the name “quackery.”

Free time allows you to fulfill a variety of personal needs. Nero reads voraciously and spends considerable time at the gym and museums.

If you do science, you need to understand the world. If you are in business, you need the world not to be understood by others.

As for John A, if he were to relive his life a million times, in almost all of them we would see him as a janitor spending endless dollars on fruitless lottery tickets, but in only one we would see him winning the lottery.

“I like to take small losses,” he said, “I just want my winnings to be bigger.”

His skepticism prevents him from investing a penny of his own money in anything other than Treasury bonds.

The authorities are good at talking about what they did, but not about what they didn’t do.

Put ten paranoids together and you will have ten different but equally plausible theories.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

The wider your horizons, the more shelves you have with unread books.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

Our mind is an excellent explanatory machine, capable of finding meaning in almost anything, interpreting any phenomenon, but completely unable to accept the idea of ​​unpredictability.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan" Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

Erudition is important to me. It demonstrates genuine intellectual curiosity.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

I really hope that someday scientists and politicians will rediscover what our ancestors always knew: the most valuable thing in human culture is respect.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

What matters most for happiness is how often we experience a pleasant feeling, or, as psychologists call it, “positive affect,” rather than how strong the feeling is. In other words, good news is first and foremost good news; how good she is is no longer so important. This means that in order to live happily, you need to receive your little “positive affects” as regularly as possible. A lot of just good news is better than one great news.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

It is easier to survive one big, but short-lived grief, than to drag out the same pain for many years.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

The more information you give a person, the more hypotheses he will have along the way and the worse the result will be. A person comes across more random garbage, and he begins to confuse it with information.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

The trouble is that our ideas are sticky like burrs: once we come up with a theory, we will never give it up. Therefore, the winner is always the one who is not in a hurry with theories.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

What matters is not how rarely we make mistakes, but what the total error is.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

Scholarship without erudition and natural curiosity leads to narrowness of thinking and fragmentation of disciplines.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

It is customary to say: “He is wise who knows how to foresee the future.” No, he is truly wise who knows that the distant future is unknown to anyone.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

We create toys. Some of them change the world.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

Fortune favors prepared minds.

Nassim Taleb, "Black Swan"

Information has a property that is very rarely talked about: in large quantities it is toxic, and in moderate quantities too.

Nassim Taleb

If you do science, you need to understand the world. If you are in business, you need the world not to be understood by others.

Nassim Taleb

The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believed him.

Economist Nassim Taleb never tires of reminding us in the words of Louis Pasteur: “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” He advises “devoting every fourth year entirely to filling gaps in your scientific and philosophical education” and “avoiding the company of “successful people” who do not read books.”

1. If you have the opportunity, reincarnate into cockroaches. They are much better than dinosaurs. They will outlive us. Big animals are dying out. Size is an important aspect: the bigger you are, the more fragile you are.
2. Hate is much harder to fake than love. You've probably heard about fake love, but hardly about fake hatred.
3. The trouble is that our ideas are sticky: once we come up with a theory, we will never give it up. Therefore, the winner is always the one who is not in a hurry with theories. When a person draws conclusions based on shaky evidence, it is difficult for him to then digest any data that contradicts these conclusions, even if they are obviously more reliable. This is due to... persistence in convictions, that is, an unwillingness to give up one’s own opinion. Don't forget that we perceive ideas as property, and property is always difficult to part with.
4. The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.
5. Reading a paper book is a real pleasure. I don't drink champagne from a plastic cup. Just like I won’t read Dostoevsky on Kindle (electronic readers from Amazon. - Ed.). Maybe I’ll also read some less-than-best literature or The New York Times on Kindle. I just don't get any benefit from reading Dostoevsky on Kindle.
6. Books read are much less important than books not read.
7. In fact, the broader your horizons, the more shelves of unread books you have.
8. It is important to feel the book. I have a large library and it is organized in a certain way. When I need to find the right quote, I don’t turn to Google, but search for the book with the supposed quote manually: and as soon as I pick up the book, the right quote comes to my mind.
9. I will say more: scholarship without erudition leads to disaster. Therefore, I remained (and still remain) a quantum engineer and trader, but I organized my life like this: I worked minimally but intensively (and with passion), focused only on highly technical aspects, never attended business meetings, avoided the company of “successful people” who do not read books, and approximately every fourth year he devoted entirely to filling gaps in his scientific and philosophical education.
10. I really hope that someday scientists and politicians will rediscover what our ancestors always knew: the most valuable thing in human culture is respect.
11. George Soros, before making a bet, collects data that could disprove his original theory.
12. Do not give drugs to a drug addict if they are experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Going into debt to solve debt problems is not homeopathy, but suicide. The credit crisis is not a temporary problem, but a structural one. We need to undergo a full course of treatment and rehabilitation.
13. To live on our planet today, we need much more imagination than nature has given us. We suffer from a lack of imagination and suppress it in others.
14. Extinction begins with the replacement of dreams with memories and ends when some memories are replaced by others.
15. If in the morning you know with any degree of accuracy how your day will turn out, then you are a little bit dead, and the more accurate your knowledge, the deader you are.
16. You gain much more power over life if you choose your own criteria.
17. People will believe anything you say unless you show weakness in front of them; they, like animals, sense the smallest cracks in the armor of confidence even before they become apparent. And the best basis for confidence is extreme politeness and friendliness, which allows you to manipulate people without offending them.
18. Just stay calm, smile, evaluate the speaker, not his speech, and you will win the argument.
19. The three most dangerous addictions: heroin, carbohydrates, monthly salary.
20. Modesty is usually called well-disguised arrogance.
21. The most dangerous things for your reputation are the words you say in its defense.
22. In fact, what matters more for happiness is how often we experience a pleasant feeling, or as psychologists call it, “positive affect,” rather than how strong the feeling is. In other words, good news is first and foremost good news; how good she is is no longer so important. This means that in order to live happily, you need to receive your little “positive affects” as regularly as possible. A lot of just good news is better than one great news.
23. Perhaps this is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without expecting nods of approval from it.
24. Living beings must, to borrow a metaphor from Marcus Aurelius, turn obstacles into fuel, just as fire does.
25. For twenty-five centuries, not a single person has appeared who could equal Plato in brilliance, depth, grace, intelligence and imagination - and who would protect us from his legacy.

April 13 “About business.” organizes a Business Forum in Minsk with the participation of Nassim Taleb - trader, millionaire, philosopher, writer. A man whose books - "The Black Swan", "Antifragile", "Fooled by Randomness" - had a serious influence on many people, not only in the world of business. The general partner of the forum is Alfa-Bank (Belarus).

In anticipation of the event, the editors of “About Business.” I have selected 13 Taleb quotes that will surely encourage you to read his works, full of healthy skepticism, deep thoughts, subtle irony and brilliant aphorisms. If you haven't already done so.

1. Understanding how to act in conditions of incomplete information is the main and most pressing task of a person.

2. Almost all books that aim to identify the skills an entrepreneur needs to thrive follow the following pattern. The authors select several famous millionaires and analyze their qualities. They look at what these “tough kids” have in common—courage, willingness to take risks, optimism, and so on—and conclude that these traits, especially willingness to take risks, enable them to succeed. You will come to the same opinion if you read their imaginary autobiographies in glossy magazines or listen to their speeches, where students of economics colleges sit with their mouths open.

Now look at the cemetery. This is not easy, because losers don’t write memoirs, and even if someone did, none of the commercial publishers I know would call him back, even out of politeness (there’s no point in responding to an email). The reader will not pay $26.95 for a story of failure, no matter how much we try to convince him that he will learn more from it than from a story of takeoff.

3. When I ask someone to name the three modern technologies that have most changed the world, they usually tell me that they are the computer, the Internet and the laser. All these technical innovations appeared suddenly, unpredictably, were not appreciated at the time of discovery, and even when they began to be used, the attitude towards them remained skeptical for a long time.

These were breakthroughs in science. These were Black Swans. Of course, now, under the influence of retrospective illusion, it seems to us that these inventions were part of some kind of master plan.

You can make your own list of phenomena similar in their results, be it political events, wars or intellectual epidemics. It is not surprising that all our prophecies look monstrously pathetic: the world is much, much more complex than we imagine. But this is not the problem - the trouble is that few people realize this. Trying to look into the future, we “tunnel” - we imagine it as ordinary, free from Black Swans, but there is nothing ordinary in the future! This is not a Platonic category!

Pivotal events do not necessarily happen instantly. Some of the historical shifts continue for decades, such as the invention of computers. This invention had a huge impact on society, but invaded our lives gradually and unnoticed. It is important to consider what is happening in a relative, rather than absolute, time dimension: earthquakes last a matter of minutes, the tragedy of September 11 lasted several hours, but historical changes and technological revolutions are the kind of Black Swans that can take decades.

4. We are poor at making predictions in an environment infested with Black Swans. We should adapt to the existence of Black Swans rather than try to predict them. We will achieve a lot if we focus on what we don’t know, that is, on anti-knowledge. In addition, you can tune in to catching happy Black Swans (those that give a positive effect), if possible, going towards them. In some fields—for example, scientific research or venture capital—betting on the unknown is extremely profitable because, typically, when you lose, the losses are small, but when you win, the gains are huge.

5. The first main postulate: throws do not depend on each other. The coin has no memory. Just because you get heads or tails doesn't mean you'll have better luck next time.

Capitalize on the prediction problem and epistemic overconfidence! I suspect that success in business is achieved by those who know how to work in conditions of initial unpredictability and even exploit it.

6. Modern reality does not often indulge us with a stable linear process that gives a feeling of satisfaction.

People who spend at least fifteen minutes every evening writing about the troubles that happened during the day cope significantly better with stress. They are not undermined by guilt; They seem to absolve themselves of responsibility, perceiving everything as destined. If the level of uncertainty in your business is high, if you constantly punish yourself for actions that led to undesirable consequences, start by keeping a diary.

7. Seize every opportunity or anything that looks like an opportunity. Opportunities are rare, much rarer than we think. To catch a lucky Black Swan, you need to look for a meeting with him yourself. People often don’t even suspect that they have a lucky chance and miss it. If a major publisher (art dealer, producer, owner of a reputable bank, prominent scientist) invites you to meet, cancel all your business: such an opportunity may not come up a second time.

I am sometimes amazed at people's inability to understand that opportunity doesn't grow on trees. Collect as many free non-lottery tickets with unlimited winnings as you can, and when they start working, don't rush to cash them. Work, spare no effort, but don’t get bogged down in a routine, but pursue these opportunities, try to get in their way.

In this sense, living in a big city is an invaluable benefit, because there is a greater likelihood of unexpected encounters; the city is a zone of concentrated randomness, and this is its advantage.

To settle in the wilderness, citing the fact that “in our era of the Internet there are no problems with communication,” means to find yourself in a tunnel, to isolate yourself from the sources of favorable chance.

8. Is planning error inherent in human nature? The researchers conducted an experiment by asking students to name the time it would take them to complete their thesis. In one demonstration test, the group was divided into optimists and pessimists: the optimists promised to finish in twenty-six days, the pessimists - in forty-seven. In fact, the job took an average of fifty-six days to complete.

9. Plans fail due to what is known as “tunneling,” a lack of attention to areas of uncertainty outside the scope of the project. Here's a typical scenario. Joe, a nonfiction writer, enters into a contract with a publisher to write a book. He should present it in two years. The topic is relatively simple: the authorized biography of the writer Salman Rushdie [British writer, winner of the Booker Prize. His 1988 novel The Satanic Verses sparked furious protest among Muslims because one of the characters was based on the Prophet Muhammad. The Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini publicly cursed Rushdie and sentenced him, as well as everyone involved in the publication of the book, to death, calling on Muslims around the world to carry out the sentence - approx. "About business."], for which Joe has plenty of materials. He's even tracked down Rushdie's ex-girlfriends and is looking forward to some enjoyable interviews.

About three months before the agreed upon date, he calls the publisher to explain that he is slightly late. The publisher foresaw this: authors rarely meet deadlines. The publisher is worried for another reason: the public has suddenly lost interest in the topic. In its plans, the company proceeded from the fact that interest in Rushdie would not fade away, but he was almost forgotten, apparently because the Iranians, for some reason, decided not to kill him.

10. My definition of a failure is that when a failure is made, a failure does not analyze the situation, does not capitalize on his mistake, becomes confused and withdraws into himself - instead of being happy that he learned something new; he tries to explain why he was wrong instead of moving on. These types often consider themselves victims of a conspiracy, bad management, or bad weather.

Learn to lose with pride. Play quickly and cleanly. Use trial and error whenever possible - you need to become a pro at making mistakes.

For a stable person, an error is information; for an unstable person, an error is just an error.

11. Wear your best clothes to your own execution, and do not lose your dignity. The last means of dealing with randomness is to control your own behavior. This is always within your control. And with this approach, the last word will always be yours.

Execution of Anne Boleyn. Still from the TV series “The Tudors”

12. There are a dime a dozen daring people who thoughtlessly make forecasts. Ask them why they make forecasts, and you will hear: “We get paid for this.” My advice to them: let them look for another job.

History teaches us that things that have never happened before do happen.

13. If in the morning you know with any degree of accuracy how your day will turn out, then you are a little bit dead, and the more accurate your knowledge, the deader you are.