Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Book cover for Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Book cover for Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Book cover for Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Book cover for Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Description

From the bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold book that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility

Why should we never listen to people who explain rather than do? Why do companies go bust? How is it that we have more slaves today than in Roman times? Why does imposing democracy on other countries never work?

The answer: too many people running the world don't have skin in the game. In his inimitable, pugnacious style, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows that skin in the game applies to all aspects of our lives. It's about having something to lose and taking a risk. Citizens, lab experimenters, artisans, political activists and hedge fund traders all have skin in the game. Policy wonks, corporate executives, theoreticians, bankers and most journalists don't.

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".

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.

Critical Reviews

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

Publishing Information

Publisher: Random House Trade
Pub date: 2020-01-07
Length: 304 pages

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