About the changed title: These aren't random Aphorisms and Heuristics (my original title was "Nassim Taleb's 201 (and counting) Aphorisms and Heuristics compilation"
Nassim Taleb is compiling his own aphorisms in this document. And he said that when he reachs 500 he will write a new book. Awful title change.
It was you who changed the title. If the author had wanted to call it "Nassim Taleb's 201 (and counting) Aphorisms and Heuristics compilation", he would have. Since he didn't, we replaced it with the original, as the HN guidelines request.
The way to supply context for a story you're submitting is not to stuff it in the title, but to post it as a comment to the thread. Had you done that here, you could have shared with us the Facebook link where Taleb describes what he's doing. That would have been more informative, and in keeping with the HN guidelines as well.
I much prefer context in the title, and find this antipathy to editorial headline construction ridiculous. I'm not likely to open a thread just because there's one comment on it, and the original title is so generic as to be uninteresting.
This is a mistake. Taleb's title makes we see in context of Taleb's website. Taleb did not wrote the headline for HN's benefit. This is not Talebs website, so we need to compensate for the different context.
These are contextless gnomic utterances, which are not prima facie uncontroversial and therefore mostly useless to us. Why should we care? We want reasoning here surely, and perhaps some supporting data rather than a set of rules from somebody with financial acumen but it seems limited social insight. I suspect this author Mr Taleb has an ego of gargantuan proportions.
Operating with partial context is not only part of real life, but also a branch of mathematical logic called computability theory. That's far from useless.
We should also care because social insight often comes from relative comparisons. They let us compare things without having precise data. For example, people growing indignant is often a sign they don't understand a topic well, which is generally true without knowing the particular person involved.
One of my favorites from this list is the following, which is also supported by research on vulnerability[1]:
It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.
193. A writer told me "I didn't get anything done today".
Answer: try to do nothing. The best way to have only good
days is to not aim at getting anything done.
Actually almost everything I've written that has survived
was written when I didn't try to get anything done.
This happened to me trying to craft aphorisms. There's some sort of inverse psychological effect where the more direct you are in what you pursue, the harder it becomes to achieve it. It's as if by being direct you suppress what your unconscious is quietly brewing.
Pg had said it's hard to write quotes, because they are so dense, like one-line essays. I suspect he meant it's hard to come up with one consciously. It's surprising how easy it is to spot an aphorism when you aren't really looking. Big revelations come when you least expect them.
To me aphorisms feel like conclusions that help you move forward. No aphorism, no direction.
9. It is quite a predicament to be both evil and risk averse.
This basically explains 4chan
41. One of life's machinations is to make some people
both rich and unhappy, that is, jointly fragile and
deprived of hope.
43. High Modernity: routine in place of physical effort,
physical effort in place of mental expenditure, & mental
expenditure in place of mental clarity.
It's hard to get clarity out of someone who doesn't share your abstractions, it's hard to get effort out of someone who doesn't share your goals
47. Life is about execution rather than purpose.
52. Used skillfully, a compliment will be much more offensive than any disparagement.
As a Canadian I know this, and I am tempted to learn Japanese because I think it will take me to the next level
63. The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain
"why" you did something.
69. Saying someone good at making profits but not
good at managing risk is like saying someone is a great
surgeon except for cases when the patients die.
75. The only valid political system is one that can
handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it.
I disagree, and I bet he wouldn't say this about a hedge fund
88. An economist is a mixture of 1) a businessman
without common sense, 2) a physicist without brain,
and 3) a speculator without balls.
110. If you detect a repressed smile on the
salesperson's face, you paid too much for it.
Competition: escalate if they're happy. Love: escalate if they're sad.
112. If powerful assholes don't find you "arrogant", it
means you are doing something wrong.
125. In a conflict, the middle ground is least likely to be
correct.
A compromise between two sane solutions can easily produce an insane solution
129. Intellect without balls is like a racecar without
tires.
163.Journalists reporting on journalism (such as the
NYT intrigue) is an unconscious form of onanism.
187. For life to be really fun, what you fear should line
up with what you desire.
191. In the days of Suetonius, 60% of prominent
educators (grammarians) were slaves. Today the ratio
is 97.1%, and growing.
Nassim Taleb is compiling his own aphorisms in this document. And he said that when he reachs 500 he will write a new book. Awful title change.
source: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015221578...