The author was also from a well off family that lost everything in the Lebanese War. I was reminded constantly of Heraclitus while reading this book.
The other thing you might need to know about Heraclitus was that he was known as ‘The Obscure’. Heraclitus’s vision of the world was that what is important is change, everything else is transitory and impermanent.īertrand Russell claims that Heraclitus came from an aristocratic family that ended up dashed agains the rocks of change and not nearly so well off. “You can never stand in the same river twice” – “All is flux”. Probably best known for some pithy little quotes about change that he made up all by himself a very long time ago. I’m going to tell you something about Heraclitus. Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t want to be stuck beside him on a long flight somewhere – but I don’t really go on long flights anywhere, so it doesn’t make too much sense using that as a criterion for anything. And it gets worse – like that quote from Oscar Wilde that has tormented me for years: “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do”, this guy reckons that if you work for more than an hour or so per day you are probably too stupid to know (or deserve) any better.ĭo you hate him yet? I didn’t. This guy is never going to win an award for modesty and he probably thinks you are stupid and have wasted your life. I’ve just checked and most of the other reviews of this book do pretty much what I thought they would do.
Taleb believes that prizes, honorary degrees, awards, and ceremonialism debase knowledge by turning it into a spectator sport. His current focus is on the properties of systems that can handle disorder ("antifragile").
Taleb is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering (only a quarter time position). In addition to his trader life, Taleb has also written, as a backup of the Incerto, more than 50 scholarly papers in statistical physics, statistics, philosophy, ethics, economics, international affairs, and quantitative finance, all around the notion of risk and probability. Taleb is the author of a multivolume essay, the Incerto (The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game) an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don’t understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientic discussions in nonover lapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent 21 years as a risk taker (quantitative trader) before becoming a flaneur and researcher in philosophical, mathematical and (mostly) practical problems with probability.
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