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In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.
As always both accessible and iconoclastic, Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights:
• For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations.
• Ethical rules aren’t universal. You’re part of a group larger than you, but it’s still smaller than humanity in general.
• Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others.
• You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. “Educated philistines” have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets.
• Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines.
• True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you’re willing to risk for it.
The phrase “skin in the game” is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it’s also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, “The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule that’s necessary for fairness and justice, and the ultimate BS-buster,” and “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 27, 2018 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780425284636
- File size: 9850 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780425284636
- File size: 9954 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Noted statistician and business philosopher Taleb (Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, 2012, etc.) continues to inform us, none too gently, that we've got it all wrong."The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding." The author argues that too much of our received wisdom in governance, finance, and other realms comes from academics and bureaucrats who aren't taking calculated risks to advance civilization. Taleb reminds us that this "skin in the game" can be quite literal: One poor Persian judge was flayed alive for misconduct, with his son assuming the job on a seat made from his father's flesh. "Skin in the game," by the author's reckoning, is more metaphorical, but nonetheless, it means that almost all of us who are not shielded by institutions and retainers "pay a price for [our] mistakes" and with any luck learn from them. Taleb's take on things is largely libertarian, though he approvingly quotes a source as saying that this libertarianism is best applied at the federal level, while at the interpersonal level of family and friends, we should be socialists--i.e., share with kin, not with coercers. Even there--and even though Ron Paul is one of the book's dedicatees--Taleb is no ideological purist. As he notes, even though the ideal of freedom is "one's first most essential good," some regulation is in order "if you can't effectively sue." The book is written at a high intellectual level, despite the author's dismissal of intellectualism, and contains some daunting math (relegated to an appendix, happily). Taleb is at his best when he simplifies his arguments down to rules and speaks as a mentor to would-be statist youth, as when he counsels, "You must start a business. Put yourself on the line, start a business."Smart and provocative, updating Robert Nozick and Friedrich Hayek while providing plenty of grist for liberal counterargument.
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