I don't read the papers; I stopped reading the papers. I read the papers only during periods of crisis, and I think papers are too long on a regular day and too short days when we have a crisis.
Nassim Nicholas TalebAn idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
Nassim Nicholas TalebYou want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.
Nassim Nicholas TalebMany people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere. And it is not thanks to universities, which obviously claim a lot more credit than their accomplishments warrant. Like Britain in the Industrial Revolution, America's asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms fo trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.
Nassim Nicholas TalebLearn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part.
Nassim Nicholas TalebI suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent...Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patently intellectually defective ones, like the former U.S. president George W. Bush, who score high on them (130), are testing the test and not the reverse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb