Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

For somebody who wrote 'Fooled by ..' one of my favorite books of all time, he certainly doesn't seem to suffer from self-doubt when it comes to stating his personal hypotheses. I can look past his condescending tone (especially towards the wealthy and 'pseudo' intellectuals), but his certitude in his own ideas -- especially after pressing home the point that we are surrounded by randomness -- tarnishes his punditry in my view.

The chapter about minorities ruling majorities was really insightful. He mentioned how if even a small percent of people become anti GMO, then GMOs will die out. A scary thing to keep in mind with the whole "label it" debate that was on here a few days ago.

Here are two Facebook posts from Taleb related to the topic and a ~3 minute video that has the main point.<p>&quot;The <i>establishment</i> composed of journos, BS-Vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs, bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists-in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious empty suits, Washington rent-seekers and other &quot;well thinking&quot; members of the vocal elites are not getting the point about what is happening and the sterility of their arguments. People are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment.&quot; - 7th March - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;nntaleb&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10153654273663375" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;nntaleb&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10153654273663375</a><p>&quot;What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking &quot;clerks&quot; and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think... and 5) who to vote for. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30y of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, microeconomic papers wrong 40% of the time, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating only 1&#x2F;5th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers with a better track record than these policymaking goons. Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren&#x27;t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. I have shown that most of what Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types call &quot;rational&quot; or &quot;irrational&quot; comes from misunderstanding of probability theory.&quot; - 9th March - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;nntaleb&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10153658794008375" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;nntaleb&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10153658794008375</a><p>&quot;Nassim Taleb: Skin in the Game&quot; - 2m48s - 22nd April - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0Uc4DI-BF28" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0Uc4DI-BF28</a>

I look forward to reading his book. His writing style is good but not great.<p>I&#x27;m surprised about a lot of accusation of arrogance,etc...<p>From what I have read his arrogance, might be misconceived as he is willingness to call out anybody on what he perceived as their BS. We need more people to call others out on their BS. (US elections, MSM, cnbc, Mosanto, wall street...)<p>Anybody that open comes out and says Saudi Arabia is a barbaric &#x2F; terrorist state, (which the US Gov, seems to over look for years) questions the Federal Reserve, teaches at community college. Constantly, open sources his books and math. Probably isn&#x27;t part of the establishment and hence might be driving peoples dislike.<p>Of course most people on Wall St. don&#x27;t like him because they don&#x27;t understand his theories or his thoughts.<p>He has great twitter feed. (He retweeted me once!)

Am I the only one who doesn&#x27;t enjoy Taleb&#x27;s writing style? I find that he tends to use overly complex vocabulary to explain very simple ideas.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;minority.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;minority.pdf</a><p>this chapter interesting contrasts with this blog post<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;setting-the-default&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;12&#x2F;01&#x2F;setting-the-default&#x2F;</a><p>-------------<p>a better writer than me could shortly synthesis what&#x27;s interesting about the two<p>the blog post is sort of a defense of cultural warriorism<p>the chapter seems to expand on it

I look forward to reading this book. It would be interesting to have an investigation of the two different kinds of &quot;skin in the game&quot; in this book.<p>There is a positive spin of the expression, e.g. the entrepreneur, who has skin in the game of his company via his shares and resources. This scenario (ideally) results in eustress.<p>However, there is also a negative spin of the expression, e.g. an employee, who has skin in the game by being afraid of losing his job. Usually, this leads to distress over the long term.<p>Hence, if I want to employ someone I face a dilemma: the employee should have skin in the game, but it shouldn&#x27;t create distress. There&#x27;s a huge set of options you can go with as the employer, but I wonder if there is an optimal solution.

I thoroughly enjoyed his other book, &quot;Anti-Fragile&quot; and even more enjoy his twitter feed. He may be low on humility factor, but him calling out BS is refreshing, esp. the self-proclaimed vanguards of science whose work in science is filled with holes and&#x2F;or is sparse.<p>Read some of the preview chapters, posted here and twitter feed. Fits very well with his writing style and over all theme. I look forward to read this book.

The solution to the employee slavery problem is simple: try a part time stint in an industry you can afford to mess up in.<p>For example, if you can get a job as a non-proprietary trader you get a huge positive expected value. You make $$ - you get a huge windfall. Mess up? You get fired and collect only a small salary. You should make a pact with a couple friends to share he windfalls, and then each of you makes a guaranteed win.

From <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;minority.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;minority.pdf</a>: &quot;Which explains why it is so hard to find peanuts on airplanes&quot;<p>I was <i>just</i> on a flight where peanuts was one of the snack options. (I chose pretzels.)

Couldn&#x27;t finish Black Swan, the same idea, regardless its merits, is discussed on 300 pages over and over again. Highly repetitive, the tone is generally condescending. I didn&#x27;t like his stories about giving taxi drivers 100 dollar bills and observing their behavior.

Taleb has made a career out of distorting and misconstruing the opinions of experts and professionals, whether it&#x27;s about statistics, option trading, or risk management. He has few is only unique insights. His trading strategies that he allegedly used to make a fortune no longer work.

You can see that he enjoys his writing, and I will enjoy reading this book.