I found it very odd that a man who describes himself as a “flaneur, meditating in cafes across the planet, [who] is currently Distinguished Professor at New York University” would spill so much ink heaping snide derision upon the “educated “idiots” of academia. People living in glass houses should not throw stones.
Taleb attempts to side-step his obvious hypocrisy by reminding the reader ad nauseam that he is a former options trader. If Taleb were opining about matters related to his real-world financial trading experiences, that would be a fair point. But most of Taleb’s observations have nothing t do with either his real-world observations or his academic training. At least the economists whom Taleb excoriates have the good sense to stick to economics.
For example, Taleb argues that the EPA is unnecessary because (according to Taleb) the mere threat of civil litigation is sufficient to prevent corporations from polluting our water and air. Unlike Talab, who was a 10 YO boy living in Lebanon when the EPA was enacted, I grew up in a pre-EPA American steel mill town during the 1950s and 1960s. I know from my own experience that after the EPA was passed in 1970, the sky over my town turned from brown to blue and my bronchitis went away. Moreover, I know from my 30+ years of experience as a lawyer, that the threat of civil litigation has little, if any, deterrent effect on polluters. So, based on my own “skin in the game” in the form of scared lung tissue and actual litigation experience, I know Taleb is both wrong and guilty of spouting the very sort of BS that he derides throughout his book.
I do not mean to suggest that I disagree with everything (or even most) of that the author has to say. Taleb does have a lot of interesting and thoughtful observations. He’s obviously very smart.
However, he apparently unable (or too lazy) to organize his thoughts into a coherent body of work. This 223 book has 7 parts and 19 chapters, each of which has numerous sub-parts, many of which are less than a single page. The author's ideas appear to be unrelated and presented in a random fashion. It was interesting, but not very worthwhile.
Buying Options
Print List Price: | $18.00 |
Kindle Price: |
$12.99
Save $5.01 (28%) |
Sold by: |
Random House LLC
Price set by seller. |
You've subscribed to Incerto!
We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
There was an error.
We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.
Add to book club
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club?
Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Follow the Author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
OK
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life Kindle Edition
by
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
(Author)
Format: Kindle Edition
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author?
Learn about Author Central
|
See all formats and editions
Hide other formats and editions
Price
|
New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
Free with your Audible trial |
Hardcover, Illustrated
"Please retry"
|
$10.00 | $10.74 |
-
Language:English
-
PublisherRandom House
-
Publication dateFebruary 27, 2018
-
File size8794 KB
Kindle e-Readers
Fire Tablets
Fire Phones
Books In This Series (6 Books)
Complete Series
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
- The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto Book 4)Kindle Edition
- The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto Book 2)Kindle Edition
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto Book 3)Kindle Edition
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto Book 1)Kindle Edition
- The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.)Kindle Edition
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and HappinessKindle Edition
Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“The problem with Taleb is not that he’s an asshole. He is an asshole. The problem with Taleb is that he is right.”—Dan from Prague, Czech Republic (Twitter)
“The most prophetic voice of all . . . [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher . . . someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone.”—John Gray, GQ
“Taleb grabs on to core problems that others ignore, or don’t see, and shakes them like an attack dog on a leg.”—Greg from New York (Twitter)
“For my wife and me, Antifragile is an annual reread.”—Colle from Richmond, Virginia (Twitter)
“I read Antifragile four times. First, to get the wisdom to survive. Second, as a memorial statement for Fat Tony. Third, as Das Kapital with correct mathematics. Fourth, as ethics to learn a good way to die.”—Tamitake from Tokyo, Japan (Twitter)
“November . . . time for my annual reread of Antifragile.”—Johann from Vienna, Austria (Twitter)
“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.”—The Wall Street Journal
“The problem with Taleb is not that he’s an asshole. He is an asshole. The problem with Taleb is that he is right.”—Dan from Prague, Czech Republic (Twitter)
“The most prophetic voice of all . . . [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher . . . someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone.”—John Gray, GQ
“Taleb grabs on to core problems that others ignore, or don’t see, and shakes them like an attack dog on a leg.”—Greg from New York (Twitter)
“For my wife and me, Antifragile is an annual reread.”—Colle from Richmond, Virginia (Twitter)
“I read Antifragile four times. First, to get the wisdom to survive. Second, as a memorial statement for Fat Tony. Third, as Das Kapital with correct mathematics. Fourth, as ethics to learn a good way to die.”—Tamitake from Tokyo, Japan (Twitter)
“November . . . time for my annual reread of Antifragile.”—Johann from Vienna, Austria (Twitter)
“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.”—The Wall Street Journal
About the Author
Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent twenty-one years as a risk taker before becoming a researcher in philosophical, mathematical, and (mostly) practical problems with probability. Although he spends most of his time as a flâneur, meditating in cafés across the planet, he is currently Distinguished Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. His books, part of a multivolume collection called Incerto, have been published in forty-one languages. Taleb has authored more than fifty scholarly papers as backup to Incerto, ranging from international affairs and risk management to statistical physics. Having been described as “a rare mix of courage and erudition,” he is widely recognized as the foremost thinker on probability and uncertainty. Taleb lives mostly in New York.
--This text refers to the paperback edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Why Each One Should Eat His Own Turtles: Equality in Uncertainty
Taste of turtle—Where are the new customers?—Sharia and asymmetry—There are the Swiss, and other people—Rav Safra and the Swiss (but different Swiss)
You who caught the turtles better eat them, goes the ancient adage.
The origin of the expression is as follows. It was said that a group of fishermen caught a large number of turtles. After cooking them, they found out at the communal meal that these sea animals were much less edible than they thought: not many members of the group were willing to eat them. But Mercury happened to be passing by—Mercury was the most multitasking, sort of put-together god, as he was the boss of commerce, abundance, messengers, the underworld, as well as the patron of thieves and brigands and, not surprisingly, luck. The group invited him to join them and offered him the turtles to eat. Detecting that he was only invited to relieve them of the unwanted food, he forced them all to eat the turtles, thus establishing the principle that you need to eat what you feed others.
A Customer Is Born Every Day
I have learned a lesson from my own naive experiences:
Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.
Of course such advice is usually unsolicited. The asymmetry is when said advice applies to you but not to him—he may be selling you something, or trying to get you to marry his daughter or hire his son-in-law.
Years ago I received a letter from a lecture agent. His letter was clear; it had about ten questions of the type “Do you have the time to field requests?,” “Can you handle the organization of the trip?” The gist of it was that a lecture agent would make my life better and make room for the pursuit of knowledge or whatever else I was about (a deeper understanding of gardening, stamp collections, Mediterranean genetics, or squid-ink recipes) while the burden of the gritty would fall on someone else. And it wasn’t any lecture agent: only he could do all these things; he reads books and can get in the mind of intellectuals (at the time I didn’t feel insulted by being called an intellectual). As is typical with people who volunteer unsolicited advice, I smelled a rat: at no phase in the discussion did he refrain from letting me know that it was “good for me.”
As a sucker, while I didn’t buy into the argument, I ended up doing business with him, letting him handle a booking in the foreign country where he was based. Things went fine until, six years later, I received a letter from the tax authorities of that country. I immediately contacted him to wonder if similar U.S. citizens he had hired incurred such tax conflict, or if he had heard of similar situations. His reply was immediate and curt: “I am not your tax attorney”—volunteering no information as to whether other U.S. customers who hired him because it was “good for them” encountered such a problem.
Indeed, in the dozen or so cases I can pull from memory, it always turns out that what is presented as good for you is not really good for you but certainly good for the other party. As a trader, you learn to identify and deal with upright people, those who inform you that they have something to sell, by explaining that the transaction arises for their own benefit, with such questions as “Do you have an ax?” (meaning an inquiry whether you have a certain interest). Avoid at all costs those who call you to tout a certain product disguised with advice. In fact the story of the turtle is the archetype of the history of transactions between mortals.
I worked once for a U.S. investment bank, one of the prestigious variety, called “white shoe” because the partners were members of hard-to-join golf clubs for proto-aristocrats where they played the game wearing white footwear. As with all such firms, an image of ethics and professionalism was cultivated, emphasized, and protected. But the job of the salespeople (actually, salesmen) on days when they wore black shoes was to “unload” inventory with which traders were “stuffed,” that is, securities they had in excess in their books and needed to get rid of to lower their risk profile. Selling to other dealers was out of the question as professional traders, typically non-golfers, would smell excess inventory and cause the price to drop. So they needed to sell to some client, on what is called the “buy side.” Some traders paid the sales force with (percentage) “points,” a variable compensation that increased with our eagerness to part with securities. Salesmen took clients out to dinner, bought them expensive wine (often, ostensibly the highest on the menu), and got a huge return on the thousands of dollars of restaurant bills by unloading the unwanted stuff on them. One expert salesman candidly explained to me: “If I buy the client, someone working for the finance department of a municipality who buys his suits at some department store in New Jersey, a bottle of $2,000 wine, I own him for the next few months. I can get at least $100,000 profits out of him. Nothing in the mahket gives you such return.”
Salesmen hawked how a given security would be perfect for the client’s portfolio, how they were certain it would rise in price and how the client would suffer great regret if he missed “such an opportunity”—that type of discourse. Salespeople are experts in the art of psychological manipulation, making the client trade, often against his own interest, all the while being happy about it and loving them and their company. One of the top salesmen at the firm, a man with huge charisma who came to work in a chauffeured Rolls Royce, was once asked whether customers didn’t get upset when they got the short end of the stick. “Rip them off, don’t tick them off” was his answer. He also added, “Remember that every day a new customer is born.”
As the Romans were fully aware, one lauds merrily the merchandise to get rid of it.
The Price of Corn in Rhodes
So, “giving advice” as a sales pitch is fundamentally unethical—selling cannot be deemed advice. We can safely settle on that. You can give advice, or you can sell (by advertising the quality of the product), and the two need to be kept separate.
But there is an associated problem in the course of the transactions: how much should the seller reveal to the buyer?
The question “Is it ethical to sell something to someone knowing the price will eventually drop?” is an ancient one—but its solution is no less straightforward. The debate goes back to a disagreement between two stoic philosophers, Diogenes of Babylon and his student Antipater of Tarsus, who took the higher moral ground on asymmetric information and seems to match the ethics endorsed by this author. Not a piece from both authors is extant, but we know quite a bit from secondary sources, or, in the case of Cicero, tertiary. The question was presented as follows, retailed by Cicero in De Officiis. Assume a man brought a large shipment of corn from Alexandria to Rhodes, at a time when corn was expensive in Rhodes because of shortage and famine. Suppose that he also knew that many boats had set sail from Alexandria on their way to Rhodes with similar merchandise. Does he have to inform the Rhodians? How can one act honorably or dishonorably in these circumstances?
We traders had a straightforward answer. Again, “stuffing”—selling quantities to people without informing them that there are large inventories waiting to be sold. An upright trader will not do that to other professional traders; it was a no-no. The penalty was ostracism. But it was sort of permissible to do it to the anonymous market and the faceless nontraders, or those we called “the Swiss,” some random suckers far away. There were people with whom we had a relational rapport, others with whom we had a transactional one. The two were separated by an ethical wall, much like the case with domestic animals that cannot be harmed, while rules on cruelty are lifted when it comes to cockroaches.
Diogenes held that the seller ought to disclose as much as civil law requires. As for Antipater, he believed that everything ought to be disclosed—beyond the law—so that there was nothing that the seller knew that the buyer didn’t know.
Clearly Antipater’s position is more robust—robust being invariant to time, place, situation, and color of the eyes of the participants. Take for now that
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse.
Hence:
Laws come and go; ethics stay.
For the notion of “law” is ambiguous and highly jurisdiction dependent: in the U.S., civil law, thanks to consumer advocates and similar movements, integrates such disclosures, while other countries have different laws. This is particularly visible with securities laws, as there are “front running” regulations and those concerning insider information that make such disclosure mandatory in the U.S., though this wasn’t so for a long time in Europe.
Indeed much of the work of investment banks in my day was to play on regulations, find loopholes in the laws. And, counterintuitively, the more regulations, the easier it was to make money.
Equality in Uncertainty
Which brings us to asymmetry, the core concept behind skin in the game. The question becomes: to what extent can people in a transaction have an informational differential between them? The ancient Mediterranean and, to some extent, the modern world, seem to have converged to Antipater’s position. While we have “buyer beware” (caveat emptor) in the Anglo-Saxon West, the idea is rather new, and never general, often mitigated by lemon laws. (A “lemon” was originally a chronically defective car, say, my convertible Mini, in love with the garage, now generalized to apply to anything that moves).
So, to the question voiced by Cicero in the debate between the two ancient stoics, “If a man knowingly offers for sale wine that is spoiling, ought he to tell his customers?,” the world is getting closer to the position of transparency, not necessarily via regulations as much as thanks to tort laws, and one’s ability to sue for harm in the event a seller deceives him or her. Recall that tort laws put some of the seller’s skin back into the game—which is why they are reviled, hated by corporations. But tort laws have side effects—they should only be used in a nonnaive way, that is, in a way that cannot be gamed. As we will see in the discussion of the visit to the doctor, they will be gamed.
Sharia, in particular the law regulating Islamic transactions and finance, is of interest to us insofar as it preserves some of the lost Mediterranean and Babylonian methods and practices—not to prop up the ego of Saudi princes. It exists at the intersection of Greco-Roman law (as reflected from people in Semitic territories’ contact with the school of law of Berytus), Phoenician trading rules, Babylonian legislations, and Arab tribal commercial customs and, as such, it provides a repository of ancient Mediterranean and Semitic lore. I hence view Sharia as a museum of the history of ideas on symmetry in transactions. Sharia establishes the interdict of gharar, drastic enough to be totally banned in any form of transaction. It is an extremely sophisticated term in decision theory that does not exist in English; it means both uncertainty and deception—my personal take is that it means something beyond informational asymmetry between agents: inequality of uncertainty. Simply, as the aim is for both parties in a transaction to have the same uncertainty facing random outcomes, an asymmetry becomes equivalent to theft. Or more robustly:
No person in a transaction should have certainty about the outcome while the other one has uncertainty.
Gharar, like every legalistic construct, will have its flaws; it remains weaker than Antipater’s approach. If only one party in a transaction has certainty all the way through, it is a violation of Sharia. But if there is a weak form of asymmetry, say, someone has inside information which gives an edge in the markets, there is no gharar as there remains enough uncertainty for both parties, given that the price is in the future and only God knows the future. Selling a defective product (where there is certainty as to the defect), on the other hand, is illegal. So the knowledge by the seller of corn in Rhodes in my first example does not fall under gharar, while the second case, that of a defective liquid, would.
As we see, the problem of asymmetry is so complicated that different schools give different ethical solutions, so let us look at the Talmudic approach.
Rav Safra and the Swiss
Jewish ethics on the matter is closer to Antipater than Diogenes in its aims at transparency. Not only should there be transparency concerning the merchandise, but perhaps there has to be transparency concerning what the seller has in mind, what he thinks deep down. The medieval rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (aka Salomon Isaacides), known as “Rashi,” relates the following story. Rav Safra, a third-century Babylonian scholar who was also an active trader, was offering some goods for sale. A buyer came as he was praying in silence, tried to purchase the merchandise at an initial price, and given that the rabbi did not reply, raised the price. But Rav Safra had no intention of selling at a higher price than the initial offer, and felt that he had to honor the initial intention. Now the question: Is Rav Safra obligated to sell at the initial price, or should he take the improved one?
Such total transparency is not absurd and not uncommon in what seems to be a cutthroat world of transactions, my former world of trading. I have frequently faced that problem as a trader and will side in favor of Rav Safra’s action in the debate. Let us follow the logic. Recall the rapacity of salespeople earlier in the chapter. Sometimes I would offer something for sale for, say, $5, but communicated with the client through a salesperson, and the salesperson would come back with an “improvement,” of $5.10. Something never felt right about the extra ten cents. It was, simply, not a sustainable way of doing business. What if the customer subsequently discovered that my initial offer was $5? No compensation is worth the feeling of shame. The overcharge falls in the same category as the act of “stuffing” people with bad merchandise. Now, to apply this to Rav Safra’s story, what if he sold to one client at the marked-up price, and to another one the exact same item for the initial price, and the two buyers happened to know one another? What if they were agents for the same customer? --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Why Each One Should Eat His Own Turtles: Equality in Uncertainty
Taste of turtle—Where are the new customers?—Sharia and asymmetry—There are the Swiss, and other people—Rav Safra and the Swiss (but different Swiss)
You who caught the turtles better eat them, goes the ancient adage.
The origin of the expression is as follows. It was said that a group of fishermen caught a large number of turtles. After cooking them, they found out at the communal meal that these sea animals were much less edible than they thought: not many members of the group were willing to eat them. But Mercury happened to be passing by—Mercury was the most multitasking, sort of put-together god, as he was the boss of commerce, abundance, messengers, the underworld, as well as the patron of thieves and brigands and, not surprisingly, luck. The group invited him to join them and offered him the turtles to eat. Detecting that he was only invited to relieve them of the unwanted food, he forced them all to eat the turtles, thus establishing the principle that you need to eat what you feed others.
A Customer Is Born Every Day
I have learned a lesson from my own naive experiences:
Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.
Of course such advice is usually unsolicited. The asymmetry is when said advice applies to you but not to him—he may be selling you something, or trying to get you to marry his daughter or hire his son-in-law.
Years ago I received a letter from a lecture agent. His letter was clear; it had about ten questions of the type “Do you have the time to field requests?,” “Can you handle the organization of the trip?” The gist of it was that a lecture agent would make my life better and make room for the pursuit of knowledge or whatever else I was about (a deeper understanding of gardening, stamp collections, Mediterranean genetics, or squid-ink recipes) while the burden of the gritty would fall on someone else. And it wasn’t any lecture agent: only he could do all these things; he reads books and can get in the mind of intellectuals (at the time I didn’t feel insulted by being called an intellectual). As is typical with people who volunteer unsolicited advice, I smelled a rat: at no phase in the discussion did he refrain from letting me know that it was “good for me.”
As a sucker, while I didn’t buy into the argument, I ended up doing business with him, letting him handle a booking in the foreign country where he was based. Things went fine until, six years later, I received a letter from the tax authorities of that country. I immediately contacted him to wonder if similar U.S. citizens he had hired incurred such tax conflict, or if he had heard of similar situations. His reply was immediate and curt: “I am not your tax attorney”—volunteering no information as to whether other U.S. customers who hired him because it was “good for them” encountered such a problem.
Indeed, in the dozen or so cases I can pull from memory, it always turns out that what is presented as good for you is not really good for you but certainly good for the other party. As a trader, you learn to identify and deal with upright people, those who inform you that they have something to sell, by explaining that the transaction arises for their own benefit, with such questions as “Do you have an ax?” (meaning an inquiry whether you have a certain interest). Avoid at all costs those who call you to tout a certain product disguised with advice. In fact the story of the turtle is the archetype of the history of transactions between mortals.
I worked once for a U.S. investment bank, one of the prestigious variety, called “white shoe” because the partners were members of hard-to-join golf clubs for proto-aristocrats where they played the game wearing white footwear. As with all such firms, an image of ethics and professionalism was cultivated, emphasized, and protected. But the job of the salespeople (actually, salesmen) on days when they wore black shoes was to “unload” inventory with which traders were “stuffed,” that is, securities they had in excess in their books and needed to get rid of to lower their risk profile. Selling to other dealers was out of the question as professional traders, typically non-golfers, would smell excess inventory and cause the price to drop. So they needed to sell to some client, on what is called the “buy side.” Some traders paid the sales force with (percentage) “points,” a variable compensation that increased with our eagerness to part with securities. Salesmen took clients out to dinner, bought them expensive wine (often, ostensibly the highest on the menu), and got a huge return on the thousands of dollars of restaurant bills by unloading the unwanted stuff on them. One expert salesman candidly explained to me: “If I buy the client, someone working for the finance department of a municipality who buys his suits at some department store in New Jersey, a bottle of $2,000 wine, I own him for the next few months. I can get at least $100,000 profits out of him. Nothing in the mahket gives you such return.”
Salesmen hawked how a given security would be perfect for the client’s portfolio, how they were certain it would rise in price and how the client would suffer great regret if he missed “such an opportunity”—that type of discourse. Salespeople are experts in the art of psychological manipulation, making the client trade, often against his own interest, all the while being happy about it and loving them and their company. One of the top salesmen at the firm, a man with huge charisma who came to work in a chauffeured Rolls Royce, was once asked whether customers didn’t get upset when they got the short end of the stick. “Rip them off, don’t tick them off” was his answer. He also added, “Remember that every day a new customer is born.”
As the Romans were fully aware, one lauds merrily the merchandise to get rid of it.
The Price of Corn in Rhodes
So, “giving advice” as a sales pitch is fundamentally unethical—selling cannot be deemed advice. We can safely settle on that. You can give advice, or you can sell (by advertising the quality of the product), and the two need to be kept separate.
But there is an associated problem in the course of the transactions: how much should the seller reveal to the buyer?
The question “Is it ethical to sell something to someone knowing the price will eventually drop?” is an ancient one—but its solution is no less straightforward. The debate goes back to a disagreement between two stoic philosophers, Diogenes of Babylon and his student Antipater of Tarsus, who took the higher moral ground on asymmetric information and seems to match the ethics endorsed by this author. Not a piece from both authors is extant, but we know quite a bit from secondary sources, or, in the case of Cicero, tertiary. The question was presented as follows, retailed by Cicero in De Officiis. Assume a man brought a large shipment of corn from Alexandria to Rhodes, at a time when corn was expensive in Rhodes because of shortage and famine. Suppose that he also knew that many boats had set sail from Alexandria on their way to Rhodes with similar merchandise. Does he have to inform the Rhodians? How can one act honorably or dishonorably in these circumstances?
We traders had a straightforward answer. Again, “stuffing”—selling quantities to people without informing them that there are large inventories waiting to be sold. An upright trader will not do that to other professional traders; it was a no-no. The penalty was ostracism. But it was sort of permissible to do it to the anonymous market and the faceless nontraders, or those we called “the Swiss,” some random suckers far away. There were people with whom we had a relational rapport, others with whom we had a transactional one. The two were separated by an ethical wall, much like the case with domestic animals that cannot be harmed, while rules on cruelty are lifted when it comes to cockroaches.
Diogenes held that the seller ought to disclose as much as civil law requires. As for Antipater, he believed that everything ought to be disclosed—beyond the law—so that there was nothing that the seller knew that the buyer didn’t know.
Clearly Antipater’s position is more robust—robust being invariant to time, place, situation, and color of the eyes of the participants. Take for now that
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse.
Hence:
Laws come and go; ethics stay.
For the notion of “law” is ambiguous and highly jurisdiction dependent: in the U.S., civil law, thanks to consumer advocates and similar movements, integrates such disclosures, while other countries have different laws. This is particularly visible with securities laws, as there are “front running” regulations and those concerning insider information that make such disclosure mandatory in the U.S., though this wasn’t so for a long time in Europe.
Indeed much of the work of investment banks in my day was to play on regulations, find loopholes in the laws. And, counterintuitively, the more regulations, the easier it was to make money.
Equality in Uncertainty
Which brings us to asymmetry, the core concept behind skin in the game. The question becomes: to what extent can people in a transaction have an informational differential between them? The ancient Mediterranean and, to some extent, the modern world, seem to have converged to Antipater’s position. While we have “buyer beware” (caveat emptor) in the Anglo-Saxon West, the idea is rather new, and never general, often mitigated by lemon laws. (A “lemon” was originally a chronically defective car, say, my convertible Mini, in love with the garage, now generalized to apply to anything that moves).
So, to the question voiced by Cicero in the debate between the two ancient stoics, “If a man knowingly offers for sale wine that is spoiling, ought he to tell his customers?,” the world is getting closer to the position of transparency, not necessarily via regulations as much as thanks to tort laws, and one’s ability to sue for harm in the event a seller deceives him or her. Recall that tort laws put some of the seller’s skin back into the game—which is why they are reviled, hated by corporations. But tort laws have side effects—they should only be used in a nonnaive way, that is, in a way that cannot be gamed. As we will see in the discussion of the visit to the doctor, they will be gamed.
Sharia, in particular the law regulating Islamic transactions and finance, is of interest to us insofar as it preserves some of the lost Mediterranean and Babylonian methods and practices—not to prop up the ego of Saudi princes. It exists at the intersection of Greco-Roman law (as reflected from people in Semitic territories’ contact with the school of law of Berytus), Phoenician trading rules, Babylonian legislations, and Arab tribal commercial customs and, as such, it provides a repository of ancient Mediterranean and Semitic lore. I hence view Sharia as a museum of the history of ideas on symmetry in transactions. Sharia establishes the interdict of gharar, drastic enough to be totally banned in any form of transaction. It is an extremely sophisticated term in decision theory that does not exist in English; it means both uncertainty and deception—my personal take is that it means something beyond informational asymmetry between agents: inequality of uncertainty. Simply, as the aim is for both parties in a transaction to have the same uncertainty facing random outcomes, an asymmetry becomes equivalent to theft. Or more robustly:
No person in a transaction should have certainty about the outcome while the other one has uncertainty.
Gharar, like every legalistic construct, will have its flaws; it remains weaker than Antipater’s approach. If only one party in a transaction has certainty all the way through, it is a violation of Sharia. But if there is a weak form of asymmetry, say, someone has inside information which gives an edge in the markets, there is no gharar as there remains enough uncertainty for both parties, given that the price is in the future and only God knows the future. Selling a defective product (where there is certainty as to the defect), on the other hand, is illegal. So the knowledge by the seller of corn in Rhodes in my first example does not fall under gharar, while the second case, that of a defective liquid, would.
As we see, the problem of asymmetry is so complicated that different schools give different ethical solutions, so let us look at the Talmudic approach.
Rav Safra and the Swiss
Jewish ethics on the matter is closer to Antipater than Diogenes in its aims at transparency. Not only should there be transparency concerning the merchandise, but perhaps there has to be transparency concerning what the seller has in mind, what he thinks deep down. The medieval rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (aka Salomon Isaacides), known as “Rashi,” relates the following story. Rav Safra, a third-century Babylonian scholar who was also an active trader, was offering some goods for sale. A buyer came as he was praying in silence, tried to purchase the merchandise at an initial price, and given that the rabbi did not reply, raised the price. But Rav Safra had no intention of selling at a higher price than the initial offer, and felt that he had to honor the initial intention. Now the question: Is Rav Safra obligated to sell at the initial price, or should he take the improved one?
Such total transparency is not absurd and not uncommon in what seems to be a cutthroat world of transactions, my former world of trading. I have frequently faced that problem as a trader and will side in favor of Rav Safra’s action in the debate. Let us follow the logic. Recall the rapacity of salespeople earlier in the chapter. Sometimes I would offer something for sale for, say, $5, but communicated with the client through a salesperson, and the salesperson would come back with an “improvement,” of $5.10. Something never felt right about the extra ten cents. It was, simply, not a sustainable way of doing business. What if the customer subsequently discovered that my initial offer was $5? No compensation is worth the feeling of shame. The overcharge falls in the same category as the act of “stuffing” people with bad merchandise. Now, to apply this to Rav Safra’s story, what if he sold to one client at the marked-up price, and to another one the exact same item for the initial price, and the two buyers happened to know one another? What if they were agents for the same customer? --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B075HYVP7C
- Publisher : Random House (February 27, 2018)
- Publication date : February 27, 2018
- Language: : English
- File size : 8794 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 254 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,047 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,334 global ratings
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2018
Comment
Report abuse
Verified Purchase
273 people found this helpful
Helpful
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2018
Verified Purchase
I loved Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan and seriously disliked the Antifragility. I am very glad to say that with the Skin in the Game Taleb is back. Opinionated, at times rude and angry, but someone you feel you should listen to.
When I buy books I usually read one star reviews. Some of them are crap (my book arrived with six missing pages!), but some give you a pretty good idea of what you are going to find. There is one star review that gets close to 5000 words limit, followed by the long thread of comments exchange where the replies by the original author get, again, to the said limit. If someone gets that fired up by the book that he regurgitates thousands of words - it's well worth a few bucks and I simply must read it.
Anyway, as always with Taleb, I now have a new reading list based on his footnotes. Yes, he comes across as an angry man. Yes, he has irrational dislike of academics (as do I) and policy makers. Yes, some of his statements are contradictory and yes, sometimes he goes too far in his arguments. But this is exactly what makes books worthwhile the time spent reading them. Contradictions have to be sorted, but to do so you have to think about the subject and come to your own conclusions, and this involves effort, and this is what makes books stimulating.
I highly recommend this book.
When I buy books I usually read one star reviews. Some of them are crap (my book arrived with six missing pages!), but some give you a pretty good idea of what you are going to find. There is one star review that gets close to 5000 words limit, followed by the long thread of comments exchange where the replies by the original author get, again, to the said limit. If someone gets that fired up by the book that he regurgitates thousands of words - it's well worth a few bucks and I simply must read it.
Anyway, as always with Taleb, I now have a new reading list based on his footnotes. Yes, he comes across as an angry man. Yes, he has irrational dislike of academics (as do I) and policy makers. Yes, some of his statements are contradictory and yes, sometimes he goes too far in his arguments. But this is exactly what makes books worthwhile the time spent reading them. Contradictions have to be sorted, but to do so you have to think about the subject and come to your own conclusions, and this involves effort, and this is what makes books stimulating.
I highly recommend this book.
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2018
Skin in the Game is at the same time thought-provoking and original but also contradictory and sometimes absurd.
Let’s start with the cons:
1. I certainly won’t be the first to notice that Taleb can be mean-spirited. But why does he insist on presenting his views in this way? The communication of his ideas, often profound, does not require a mean-spirited or condescending tone. For however brilliant Taleb thinks he is, his skills in persuasion are severely lacking; he’s alienating a significant readership that may have otherwise been more receptive to his ideas.
Not very far into the book we see Taleb take cheap shots at Steven Pinker, out of nowhere, discussing a topic that has nothing to do with any of Pinker’s actual ideas or positions. One wonders why Taleb cannot just present his ideas without the incessant personal attacks and condescension.
2. His overall philosophy appears to be self-refuting. He reviles “intellectuals,” professors, and thinkers while praising “doers” and men of practice. He’s particularly distrustful of those who give advice for a living. Here’s Taleb:
“Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.”
So should we then ignore THIS advice? As far as I can tell, Skin in the Game is a work of philosophy, an intellectual exercise that argues against the value of intellectual exercise. This is the same self-refuting logic of relativism—in that the statement “everything is relative” is self-refuting because the statement itself needs to be absolute.
If Taleb is wrong in any part of his philosophy it doesn’t appear that he would incur any penalty (no skin in the game). The upside for him is book sales with little to no downside risk, so by using his own logic we should conclude to not trust him.
Also, to the extent that you believe ideas have power you might find yourself disagreeing with Taleb’s extreme position that no good ideas could possibly come from someone in an academic position (particularly from the reviled economists).
Except that Taleb uses economic theories to frame his thinking. The Tragedy of the Commons, something Taleb discusses in his book, was developed by the economist William Forster Lloyd in his armchair. Even Taleb’s Black Swan concept is a reformulation of the Peso problem developed by...economists.
I’m sure anyone can think up examples, rather easily, of useful ideas that were discovered by intellectuals or from university research.
3. Taleb obsesses about the superiority of practice over academics and theory. This is a questionable proposition.
As just one example, a recent study in the American Journal of Medicine concluded that “patients whose doctors had practiced for at least 20 years stayed longer in the hospital and were more likely to die compared to those whose doctors got their medical license in the past five years.”
My own personal experience corroborates this, as a medical student was able to correctly diagnose what the attending physician had missed on a trip to the ER. Very experienced, practical individuals sometimes perpetuate bad habits and fail to keep informed of the theories and academics that lead to better practice. This point is completely lost on Taleb.
4. Taleb’s definition of rationality as any action that promotes survival is patently false, as a simple thought experiment can show. Imagine a hypothetical survival machine is available for your use. By plugging yourself in, it will guarantee and maximize your life span and, on a social scale, maximizes reproduction. The price is that the machine also inflicts a high degree of pain and cuts you off from contact with other people.
According to the logic of Taleb, the rational thing to do would be to plug into this machine. Of course, no one would volunteer to do this because survival is not what motivates rational behavior. Any rational agent would choose one year of pleasant life over 100 years in the survival machine, because actions have value according to how they promote or are perceived to promote well-being or pleasure.
Taleb, using this more believable definition of rationality, could have used it to argue the same points, namely how religious belief cannot be called irrational if it promotes well-being, which includes psychological well-being and survival but not survival alone.
The pros:
That Taleb is antagonistic and holds some questionable views does not mean that he’s wrong about everything. When not being demeaning or taking extreme positions, Taleb writes about some of the most original, thought-provoking, and profound ideas. And even when you find yourself disagreeing with him, he makes you think. For this reason alone, the book is worth checking out.
The idea that the extent of people’s stakes in particular outcomes is a critical yet underrated determinant of events is a profound idea with several implications, which Taleb skillfully explores throughout the book. And his idea that you should have to pay some kind of penalty for decisions that negatively impact others—risk sharing vs. risk transfer—is a solid framework for thinking about a host of issues. Of course, these ideas would be easier to swallow if presented with a little more humility, but I suppose we should know what to expect from Taleb by now.
Let’s start with the cons:
1. I certainly won’t be the first to notice that Taleb can be mean-spirited. But why does he insist on presenting his views in this way? The communication of his ideas, often profound, does not require a mean-spirited or condescending tone. For however brilliant Taleb thinks he is, his skills in persuasion are severely lacking; he’s alienating a significant readership that may have otherwise been more receptive to his ideas.
Not very far into the book we see Taleb take cheap shots at Steven Pinker, out of nowhere, discussing a topic that has nothing to do with any of Pinker’s actual ideas or positions. One wonders why Taleb cannot just present his ideas without the incessant personal attacks and condescension.
2. His overall philosophy appears to be self-refuting. He reviles “intellectuals,” professors, and thinkers while praising “doers” and men of practice. He’s particularly distrustful of those who give advice for a living. Here’s Taleb:
“Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.”
So should we then ignore THIS advice? As far as I can tell, Skin in the Game is a work of philosophy, an intellectual exercise that argues against the value of intellectual exercise. This is the same self-refuting logic of relativism—in that the statement “everything is relative” is self-refuting because the statement itself needs to be absolute.
If Taleb is wrong in any part of his philosophy it doesn’t appear that he would incur any penalty (no skin in the game). The upside for him is book sales with little to no downside risk, so by using his own logic we should conclude to not trust him.
Also, to the extent that you believe ideas have power you might find yourself disagreeing with Taleb’s extreme position that no good ideas could possibly come from someone in an academic position (particularly from the reviled economists).
Except that Taleb uses economic theories to frame his thinking. The Tragedy of the Commons, something Taleb discusses in his book, was developed by the economist William Forster Lloyd in his armchair. Even Taleb’s Black Swan concept is a reformulation of the Peso problem developed by...economists.
I’m sure anyone can think up examples, rather easily, of useful ideas that were discovered by intellectuals or from university research.
3. Taleb obsesses about the superiority of practice over academics and theory. This is a questionable proposition.
As just one example, a recent study in the American Journal of Medicine concluded that “patients whose doctors had practiced for at least 20 years stayed longer in the hospital and were more likely to die compared to those whose doctors got their medical license in the past five years.”
My own personal experience corroborates this, as a medical student was able to correctly diagnose what the attending physician had missed on a trip to the ER. Very experienced, practical individuals sometimes perpetuate bad habits and fail to keep informed of the theories and academics that lead to better practice. This point is completely lost on Taleb.
4. Taleb’s definition of rationality as any action that promotes survival is patently false, as a simple thought experiment can show. Imagine a hypothetical survival machine is available for your use. By plugging yourself in, it will guarantee and maximize your life span and, on a social scale, maximizes reproduction. The price is that the machine also inflicts a high degree of pain and cuts you off from contact with other people.
According to the logic of Taleb, the rational thing to do would be to plug into this machine. Of course, no one would volunteer to do this because survival is not what motivates rational behavior. Any rational agent would choose one year of pleasant life over 100 years in the survival machine, because actions have value according to how they promote or are perceived to promote well-being or pleasure.
Taleb, using this more believable definition of rationality, could have used it to argue the same points, namely how religious belief cannot be called irrational if it promotes well-being, which includes psychological well-being and survival but not survival alone.
The pros:
That Taleb is antagonistic and holds some questionable views does not mean that he’s wrong about everything. When not being demeaning or taking extreme positions, Taleb writes about some of the most original, thought-provoking, and profound ideas. And even when you find yourself disagreeing with him, he makes you think. For this reason alone, the book is worth checking out.
The idea that the extent of people’s stakes in particular outcomes is a critical yet underrated determinant of events is a profound idea with several implications, which Taleb skillfully explores throughout the book. And his idea that you should have to pay some kind of penalty for decisions that negatively impact others—risk sharing vs. risk transfer—is a solid framework for thinking about a host of issues. Of course, these ideas would be easier to swallow if presented with a little more humility, but I suppose we should know what to expect from Taleb by now.
Top reviews from other countries
anon
1.0 out of 5 stars
An asymmetrical and disappointing read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 14, 2018Verified Purchase
The first 20% of this book is interesting and insightful. Justice comes from symmetrical encounters, not imbalances of power. And ensuring equality of any encounter means that both parties must have 'skin in the game', i.e. a personal investment in it. Bureaucratic structures undermine ethics therefore. But very quickly you suspect that the author has been put up to this by a greedy publisher anxious for a quick cash grab. The remaining 80% adds little to the thesis sketched out at the start and, to some extent distracts from it. There are quite a few unsupported and prejudiced irrational rants against tenured academics, clinical psychologists and Saudi Arabia. The book is pompously divided into 'Books' even though some of the chapters are very short. The book is also itself quite asymmetrical (and therefore undermines the author's argument) in two ways. First, the author takes every opportunity to reference his own previous works, as though this one is part of some Grand Theory. If you haven't read these you think you're at a disadvantage. Second is the bizarre 'Technical Appendix' which seems to be included simply to show off the author's reputed mathematical acumen. No-one reading this book would need these arcane formulae, and specialists who do understand them ('Probabilistic Sustainability' etc) would find them in Taleb's technical academic papers. So this final section, like the last 80% of the book, seems to have been included just to make up the word count. Constantly trying to impress the reader with his learning, Taleb must be a very tiresome dinner party guest indeed. GCB
66 people found this helpful
Report abuse
James Lizard
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great philosopher?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 22, 2018Verified Purchase
I was really looking forward to this as a fan of Fooled by Randomness but half-way through I'm beginning to think NNT is a pompous ass and a bore to boot. At the age of 70, I wonder if the time left to me is best served by ducking out of the rest of this waffle or to soldier on in search of nuggets of wisdom.
UPDATE: I did carry on to the end of the book for old times' sake. I left it feeling that Taleb is like a friend who has some dodgy politics, likes to make a lot 0f "controversial" remarks, occasionally makes some insightful points, can be amusing and can also be a crashing bore. In other words, you're pleased to see your old friend but rather relieved when he finally leaves and glad to have a bit of time away from each other before meeting up again.
UPDATE: I did carry on to the end of the book for old times' sake. I left it feeling that Taleb is like a friend who has some dodgy politics, likes to make a lot 0f "controversial" remarks, occasionally makes some insightful points, can be amusing and can also be a crashing bore. In other words, you're pleased to see your old friend but rather relieved when he finally leaves and glad to have a bit of time away from each other before meeting up again.
31 people found this helpful
Report abuse
John Brewer
2.0 out of 5 stars
An Unfortunate, Highly Unexpected Event
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2018Verified Purchase
This book is a far easier read than the author's previous writings. Which is good because the "deep-seated intellectual insecurity" to which Mr Taleb confessed and committed himself to protecting and cultivating in the preface to Fooled by Randomness (2001) appears sadly to have got the better of him.
Some 1,150 days of seclusion in the years following The Black Swan (2007) afforded time not only to devour the 550 or so books listed in the bibliography to the much lengthier Antifragile (2012) but also to develop what he himself previously detested - the random use of borrowed wisdom (though it was fascinating to read why use of the wheel initially disappeared from the Levant after the Arab invasion) - and to wield his keyboard repeatedly and unkindly to hammer perceived nails in the shape of some fine fellow professionals with whom he now finds himself increasingly and violently disagreeing.
In Skin in the Game we see these aberrations taken even further with surprisingly gratuitous and sarcastic references ("Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison, sometimes known as Hillary Clinton" and Joseph Stiglitz as “Intellectual Yet Idiot") along with random Daily Mail-type stories about how increased halal lamb imports from New Zealand and the numbers of automatic shifting vehicles are instances of minority dictatorship and how Italians regard McDonalds in Milan Centrale as refuge from a risky meal. Mr Taleb has of course written that it’s only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one, but it seems to me that after accumulating a steady stream of positive returns he has given us his own unfortunate, highly unexpected event.
Some 1,150 days of seclusion in the years following The Black Swan (2007) afforded time not only to devour the 550 or so books listed in the bibliography to the much lengthier Antifragile (2012) but also to develop what he himself previously detested - the random use of borrowed wisdom (though it was fascinating to read why use of the wheel initially disappeared from the Levant after the Arab invasion) - and to wield his keyboard repeatedly and unkindly to hammer perceived nails in the shape of some fine fellow professionals with whom he now finds himself increasingly and violently disagreeing.
In Skin in the Game we see these aberrations taken even further with surprisingly gratuitous and sarcastic references ("Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison, sometimes known as Hillary Clinton" and Joseph Stiglitz as “Intellectual Yet Idiot") along with random Daily Mail-type stories about how increased halal lamb imports from New Zealand and the numbers of automatic shifting vehicles are instances of minority dictatorship and how Italians regard McDonalds in Milan Centrale as refuge from a risky meal. Mr Taleb has of course written that it’s only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one, but it seems to me that after accumulating a steady stream of positive returns he has given us his own unfortunate, highly unexpected event.
27 people found this helpful
Report abuse
SimpleSimon
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important Moral Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 19, 2018Verified Purchase
An entertaining read. Full of thoughtful observation and insight. Written in a style that comes with the freedom to say what one thinks.
In many ways this is a deeply moral book with important messages for how we live. This realization becomes suddenly clear in the rather poetic epilogue, which I loved. Collective action (the game) generates many meaningful benefits, but, to be symmetrical and ethical, it always requires contribution of players, and contribution implies risk (the skin). Taleb has no time for people in authority who don't get this and consequently promote dangerous ideas which lead to ignorant policy or business decisions. For them he reserves his full scorn (for example, in his view, Monsanto and its dangerous development of GM crops). Through ignorance, they risk catastrophically ruining the systems we depend on for everyone for ever.
On the downside, Taleb's style of relentlessly 'speaking truth to power' can feel a bit uncomfortable and negative. However we are compensated by his practical, ethical and logical reasoning - made more clear in an appendix devoted to the maths that underpins the conclusions, and further leavened with fascinating personal stories.
By the way, like many books it's one worth starting at the back with the glossary, where you will be able to learn to speak 'Taleb'.
In many ways this is a deeply moral book with important messages for how we live. This realization becomes suddenly clear in the rather poetic epilogue, which I loved. Collective action (the game) generates many meaningful benefits, but, to be symmetrical and ethical, it always requires contribution of players, and contribution implies risk (the skin). Taleb has no time for people in authority who don't get this and consequently promote dangerous ideas which lead to ignorant policy or business decisions. For them he reserves his full scorn (for example, in his view, Monsanto and its dangerous development of GM crops). Through ignorance, they risk catastrophically ruining the systems we depend on for everyone for ever.
On the downside, Taleb's style of relentlessly 'speaking truth to power' can feel a bit uncomfortable and negative. However we are compensated by his practical, ethical and logical reasoning - made more clear in an appendix devoted to the maths that underpins the conclusions, and further leavened with fascinating personal stories.
By the way, like many books it's one worth starting at the back with the glossary, where you will be able to learn to speak 'Taleb'.
11 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Gautham Shenoy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Skin in the Game: Heuristic to cut through the BS & get the real deal
Reviewed in India on September 18, 2018Verified Purchase
This book introduces an important filtering mechanism to get the real deal in life. "Skin in the game" is about getting the agents to not only enjoy the upside of their actions but also claim the downside of the consequences emanating from those actions.
This is important in the longer run, because non perishable things such as ideas, lifestyle, dietary habits, religions that have survived for a long time, being sufficiently stressed by time, will survive for much longer (Lindy's Effect). But the critical piece here is that the agents espousing these non-perishables should have a skin in the game.
The contrast is the rent seekers, or bureaucrats who only get the upside of their actions (bonuses), but pass on the downside to others citing uncertainty. Thus they get to be in decision making for a long time without being affected by the ill-effects of those decisions.
The book applies the heuristic to multiple areas. Interesting concepts covered in the books include Minority Rule (How intransigent minorities determine the preference of majority), Intellectual Yet Idiots (People who confuse complex systems for simple systems, and prescribe appealing but harmful solutions), Rationality of Religions (The do's & dont's in Religions inspire actions from followers, and these actions have enabled the adherants to survive. Rationality can only be discussed in the context of survival, or rather the avoidance of systemic ruin).
As usual Taleb is witty, names names (Bob Rubin, Thaler, Saudi Princes), acerbic but very insightful.
One thing that Taleb misses out on is application of Lindy's Effect to the relatively longer survival of Lithuanians, Irish and the Hindus who did not have the warrior but the priestly class at the top. Societies which had a warrior class at the top caved in to the invasion by semetic religions in a very short duration. However the adherants of these religions resisted converting to the invading Semetic religions for the longest period. So Lindy does seem to have a role to play here.
Final word: Excellent book. Will be revisiting this one many more times.
This is important in the longer run, because non perishable things such as ideas, lifestyle, dietary habits, religions that have survived for a long time, being sufficiently stressed by time, will survive for much longer (Lindy's Effect). But the critical piece here is that the agents espousing these non-perishables should have a skin in the game.
The contrast is the rent seekers, or bureaucrats who only get the upside of their actions (bonuses), but pass on the downside to others citing uncertainty. Thus they get to be in decision making for a long time without being affected by the ill-effects of those decisions.
The book applies the heuristic to multiple areas. Interesting concepts covered in the books include Minority Rule (How intransigent minorities determine the preference of majority), Intellectual Yet Idiots (People who confuse complex systems for simple systems, and prescribe appealing but harmful solutions), Rationality of Religions (The do's & dont's in Religions inspire actions from followers, and these actions have enabled the adherants to survive. Rationality can only be discussed in the context of survival, or rather the avoidance of systemic ruin).
As usual Taleb is witty, names names (Bob Rubin, Thaler, Saudi Princes), acerbic but very insightful.
One thing that Taleb misses out on is application of Lindy's Effect to the relatively longer survival of Lithuanians, Irish and the Hindus who did not have the warrior but the priestly class at the top. Societies which had a warrior class at the top caved in to the invasion by semetic religions in a very short duration. However the adherants of these religions resisted converting to the invading Semetic religions for the longest period. So Lindy does seem to have a role to play here.
Final word: Excellent book. Will be revisiting this one many more times.
34 people found this helpful
Report abuse
More items to explore
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto Book 3)Kindle Edition
- The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto Book 4)Kindle Edition
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto Book 1)Kindle Edition
- The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto Book 2)Kindle Edition
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the FactsKindle Edition
- The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.)Kindle Edition
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto Book 3)Kindle Edition
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto Book 1)Kindle Edition
- The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto Book 4)Kindle Edition
- Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, AntifragileKindle Edition
- The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.)Kindle Edition
- The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy (Dover Books on Mathematics)Kindle Edition
There's a problem loading this menu right now.
Get free delivery with Amazon Prime
Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books.