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{{Short description|Lebanese-American author (born 1960)}}{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2023}}

factoids

| birth_place = Amioun, Lebanon| death_date =| death_place = Lebanese nationality law>Lebanese and American

• University of Paris {{Clarify|post-text=(see talk)|date=August 2023{edih} (BS, MS)
• Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (MBA)
• University of Paris (Dauphine) (PhD)}}| thesis_title = The Microstructure of Dynamic Hedging| thesis_year = 1998| doctoral_advisor = Hélyette Geman| doctoral_students = | known_for = Applied epistemology, antifragility, black swan theory, ludic fallacy, antilibrary

fooledbyrandomness.com}}| field = Decision theory, risk, probability| work_institution = New York University Tandon School of Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Courant Institute of Mathematical SciencesBruno Leoni Institute>Bruno Leoni Award, Wolfram Innovator Award }}Nassim Nicholas Taleb{{efn|}} ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|t|ɑː|l|É™|b}}; alternatively Nessim or Nissim; born 12 September 1960) is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist.NEWS, Berenson, Alex, Alex Berenson,www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/business/12change.html?pagewanted=2, A Year Later, Little Change on Wall St., The New York Times, 11 September 2009, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, trader, and author, has argued for years that. ..., NEWS, Maslin, Janet, Janet Maslin,www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/books/17book.html, Explaining the Modern World and Keeping It Short, The New York Times, 16 November 2010, In his happily provocative new book of aphorisms, the fiscal prophet and self-appointed flâneur Nassim Nicholas Taleb aims particular scorn at anyone who thinks aphorisms require explanation. ..., His work concerns problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty.Taleb is the author of the Incerto, a five-volume philosophical essay on uncertainty published between 2001 and 2018 (notably, The Black Swan and Antifragile). He has been a professor at several universities, serving as a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering since September 2008.NEWS,www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/books/bestseller/besthardbusiness.html?pagewanted=print, Hardcover Business Best Sellers, New York Times, 2 November 2008, WEB,www.businessworld.in/index.php/Interviews/Right-Out-Of-The-Blue.html, Right Out Of The Blue, Businessworld, 24 April 2007, 14 October 2009, dead,www.businessworld.in/index.php/Interviews/Right-Out-Of-The-Blue.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20090908001319www.businessworld.in/index.php/Interviews/Right-Out-Of-The-Blue.html,">web.archive.org/web/20090908001319www.businessworld.in/index.php/Interviews/Right-Out-Of-The-Blue.html, 8 September 2009, WEB,www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/taleb.html, The third culture â€“ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Edge, 14 October 2009,edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/taleb.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20130724135339edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/taleb.html,">web.archive.org/web/20130724135339edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/taleb.html, 24 July 2013, dead, He has been co-editor-in-chief of the academic journal Risk and Decision Analysis since September 2014. He has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance, a hedge fund manager, and a derivatives trader, and is currently listed as a scientific adviser at Universa Investments.WEB, People at Universa Investments L.P.,www.universa.net/people.html, www.universa.net, Universa Investments L.P., 8 March 2018,www.universa.net/people.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20180723092619www.universa.net/people.html,">web.archive.org/web/20180723092619www.universa.net/people.html, 23 July 2018, dead, The Sunday Times called his 2007 book The Black Swan one of the 12 most influential books since World War II.NEWS, Appleyard, Bryan, Bryan Appleyard, 19 July 2009, Books that helped to change the world, The Sunday Times,www.thetimes.co.uk/article/books-that-helped-to-change-the-world-qbhxgvg2kwh, subscription, Taleb criticized the risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises, subsequently profiting from the late-2000s financial crisis.NEWS, Patterson, Scott, subscription,www.wsj.com/articles/SB122567265138591705, October Pain Was ‘Black Swan’ Gain, The Wall Street Journal, 3 November 2008, 14 October 2009, WEB, Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Uncertainty,iai.tv/video/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-uncertainty, IAI TV, 14 February 2014, He advocates what he calls a “black swan robust” society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events.NEWS,www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aPaQ1qmwpYmw&pid=newsarchive, Brevan Howard Shows Paranoid Survive in Hedge Fund of Time Outs, Bloomberg News, 31 March 2009, ‘black swans’ â€“ difficult-to-predict events that can wipe out a fund. The term was popularized by hedge fund manager and author Nassim Taleb.”, He proposes what he has termed “antifragility” in systems; that is, an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events, errors, and volatility,JOURNAL, Genes | Free Full-Text | Antifragility and Tinkering in Biology (and in Business) Flexibility Provides an Efficient Epigenetic Way to Manage Risk, Genes, 2, 4, 998–1016, 10.3390/genes2040998, 24710302, 3927596, 2011, Danchin, Antoine, Binder, Philippe M., Noria, Stanislas, free, WEB,www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-anti-fragile-life-of-the-economy, Antoine Danchin on The Anti-Fragile Life of the Economy, Project-syndicate.org, 1 May 2015, 7 May 2015, as well as “convex tinkering” as a method of scientific discovery, by which he means that decentralized experimentation outperforms directed research.JOURNAL, Derbyshire, J., Wright, G., 2014, Preparing for the future: development of an ‘antifragile’ methodology that complements scenario planning by omitting causation, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 82, 215–225, 10.1016/j.techfore.2013.07.001,strathprints.strath.ac.uk/52933/1/Derbyshire_Wright_TFSC2014_methodology_that_complements_scenario_planning_by_omitting_causation.pdf, THESIS, Mattos-Hall, J. A., 2014, Strategy Under Uncertainty: Open Innovation and Strategic Learning for the Iceland Ocean Cluster (Thesis),skemman.is/is/item/view/1946/18109, Thesis,

Early life and family background

(File:Taleb student.png|thumb|250px|Taleb as a student)Taleb was born in Amioun, Lebanon, to Minerva Ghosn and Nagib Taleb,WEB,www.fooledbyrandomness.com/education.pdf, Fooled by Randomness – Education, 23 November 2017, My father was known in Lebanon as the “Intelligent Student Student Intelligent”, after a play on words as intelligent student (or scholar) meant “Taleb Nagib” and his name was Nagib Taleb, an oncologist and a researcher in anthropology. His parents were of Antiochian Greek descent, holding French citizenship. His grandfather, {{Wikidata fallback link|Q43475996}}, and his great-grandfather, {{Wikidata fallback link|Q43476186}}, were both deputy prime ministers in the 1940s through the 1970s. His paternal grandfather Nassim Taleb was a supreme court judge and his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Ibrahim Taleb (Nabbout), was a governor of Mount Lebanon in 1866.MAGAZINE,www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/04/22/blowing-up, Blowing Up, The New Yorker, Malcolm, Gladwell, 15 April 2002, 3 January 2019, www.newyorker.com, NEWS,www.ft.com/content/86648df6-ddca-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6, How to avert catastrophe, Financial Times, 19 January 2017, 3 January 2019, WEB,www.aub.edu.lb/doctorates/Pages/default.aspx, Honorary Doctorates, www.aub.edu.lb, 3 January 2019, Taleb attended a French school there, the Grand Lycée Franco-Libanais in Beirut.NEWS, Wighton, David, 28 March 2008, Lunch with the FT: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Financial Times,www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2855f64c-f976-11dc-9b7c-000077b07658.html, 7 May 2015, His family saw its political prominence and wealth reduced by the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975.NEWS, Helmore, Edward, 27 September 2008,www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/28/businessandfinance.philosophy, The new sage of Wall Street, The Guardian, 7 May 2015, He is a Greek Orthodox Christian.TWEET, nntaleb, 1177630356327075841, Christian Orthodox,

Education

Taleb received his bachelor and Master of Science degrees from the University of Paris.NEWS,query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2D71539F932A05752C0A96E948260, Cynthia Shelton, Business Student, Is Wed in Atlanta, The New York Times, 31 January 1988, 14 October 2009, {{Clarify|post-text=(see talk)|date=August 2023}} He holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (1983),NEWS, Stephanie, Baker-Said, 27 March 2008, Flight of the Black Swan, Bloomberg Markets,www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0508_story1.html,web.archive.org/web/20120326024500/https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0508_story1.html, 26 March 2012, and a PhD in management science from the University of Paris (Dauphine) (1998),BBK, 2015, “Our staff: Helyette Geman, PhD Students, Past Students,” at Birkbeck, University of London, Dept of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, see weblink and weblink, accessed 7 May 2015. under the direction of Hélyette Geman. His dissertation focused on the mathematics of derivatives pricing.WEB, DRM Finance, 24 June 1998, Thèses Soutenes, Nassim Taleb, Réplication d’option et structure du marché,www.cereg.dauphine.fr/these.php?id=107, 10 May 2015, dead,www.cereg.dauphine.fr/these.php?id=107," title="web.archive.org/web/20150518072514www.cereg.dauphine.fr/these.php?id=107,">web.archive.org/web/20150518072514www.cereg.dauphine.fr/these.php?id=107, 18 May 2015, fr, Replication of Options and Market Structure, According to a profile in Le Monde, Taleb claims to read in ten languages.NEWS, 20 November 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, le sauvage de la finance, fr, Le Monde.fr,www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2007/11/20/nassim-nicholas-taleb-le-sauvage-de-la-finance_980414_3218.html, 22 August 2020,

Finance view

Taleb has been a practitioner of mathematical finance,NEWS, Tett, G., 27 March 2011, Black swans, but no need to flap ..., Financial Times, 12,www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ddd47642-55b7-11e0-a00c-00144feab49a.html#axzz1I1UzeFiM, 7 May 2015, a hedge fund manager,NEWS,pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1578644971.html?dids=1578644971:1578644971&FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE:FT&type=current&date=Oct+19%2C+2008&author=Anonymous&pub=The+Washington+Post&desc=He+Said+It&pqatl=google, He Said It, Washington Post, 18 October 2008, Nassim Taleb a former hedge fund manager commenting on the performance of accounts run by Universa Investments where he is an adviser ..., NEWS,www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-08-06-whatiread_x.htm, What I Read, USA Today, 4 August 2006, Taleb, a hedge fund manager, warns of trying to predict behavior by analyzing past successes., and a derivatives trader.NEWS, Appleyard, Bryan, Bryan Appleyard, 1 June 2008, Nassim Nicholas Taleb the prophet of boom and doom, The Times, London,business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4022091.ece, 19 May 2010, WEB, Dubner, Stephen,freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/straight-from-the-black-swans-mouth/, Straight From the Black Swan’s Mouth, The New York Times, 21 May 2007, He is a scientific adviser at Universa Investments.Taleb considers himself less a businessman than an epistemologist of randomness, and says that he used trading to attain independence and freedom from authority.NEWS, Stone, Amy, 23 October 2005, Profiting from the Unexpected, Bloomberg Business Week,www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2005-10-23/profiting-from-the-unexpected, 7 May 2015, WEB,www.fooledbyrandomness.com/busweek.mht, Profiting from the Unexpected, dead,www.fooledbyrandomness.com/busweek.mht," title="web.archive.org/web/20061021070352www.fooledbyrandomness.com/busweek.mht,">web.archive.org/web/20061021070352www.fooledbyrandomness.com/busweek.mht, 21 October 2006, 7 May 2015, He advocated for tail risk hedging,NEWS, Harrington, Shannon D.,www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/pimco-sells-black-swan-protection-as-wall-street-profits-from-selling-fear.html, Pimco Sells Black Swan Protection as Wall Street Markets Fear, Bloomberg News, Bloomberg, 19 July 2010, 1 October 2010, which is intended to mitigate investors’ exposure to extreme market moves. His business model has been to safeguard investors against crises while reaping rewards from rare events, and thus his investment management career has included several jackpots followed by lengthy dry spells.He has also held the following positions:Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Home Page, “Official Academic Biography”, at fooledbyrandomness.com (online), accessed 9 May 2015.Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Home Page, Professional Information, at fooledbyrandomness.com, accessed 9 May 2015.NEWS, Taleb Outsells Greenspan as Black Swan Gives Worst Turbulence,www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHfkhe8.C._8, Bloomberg News, managing director and proprietary trader at Credit Suisse UBS, worldwide chief proprietary arbitrage derivatives trader for currencies, commodities and non-dollar fixed income at First Boston, chief currency derivatives trader for Banque Indosuez, managing director and worldwide head of financial option arbitrage at CIBC Wood Gundy, derivatives arbitrage trader at Bankers Trust (now Deutsche Bank), proprietary trader at BNP Paribas, independent option market maker on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and founder of Empirica Capital.Taleb reportedly became financially independent after the crash of 1987 and was successful during the Nasdaq dive in 2000 as well as the financial crisis that began in 2007, a development he attributed to the mismatch between reality and statistical distributions used in finance. After that crisis, Taleb became an activist for what he called a “black swan robust society”.NEWS,www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbaff18c-23d2-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html, Ten principles for a Black Swan-proofworld, The Financial Times, 8 April 2009, 14 October 2009, dead,www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbaff18c-23d2-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20130228215819www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbaff18c-23d2-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html,">web.archive.org/web/20130228215819www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbaff18c-23d2-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html, 28 February 2013, WEB, Marion, Maneker, 26 March 2009, Slate (magazine), Slate, The Big Money,www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/03/26/mr-taleb-goes-washington, Mr. Taleb goes to Washington, 8 May 2015, dead,www.marionmaneker.com/2009/03/mr-taleb-goes-to-washington/," title="web.archive.org/web/20160419125636www.marionmaneker.com/2009/03/mr-taleb-goes-to-washington/,">web.archive.org/web/20160419125636www.marionmaneker.com/2009/03/mr-taleb-goes-to-washington/, 19 April 2016, and Additional archive, accessed 7 May 2015. Since 2007 he has been a Principal/Senior Scientific Adviser at Universa Investments in Miami, Florida, a fund based on the “black swan” idea, owned and managed by former Empirica partner Mark Spitznagel. Some of its separate funds made returns of 65% to 115% in October 2008.NEWS,www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aW2ByfpGZflA, Bloomberg News, Taleb Says Business Schools Use ‘Bogus’ Risk Models (Update1), 7 November 2008, In a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, Taleb claimed he retired from trading in 2004 and became a full-time author.NEWS, Patterson, Scott,www.wsj.com/articles/SB118429436433665637, Mr. Volatility and the Swan, The Wall Street Journal, 13 July 2007, 14 October 2009, {{contradictory inline|date=May 2015}} He describes the nature of his involvement as “totally passive” from 2010 on.Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Home Page, Business Positions, at fooledbyrandomness.com, accessed 24 May 2015.Taleb attended the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos in 2009; at that event he had harsh words for bankers, suggesting that bankers’ recklessness will not be repeated “if you have punishment”.NEWS, Ignatius, David, David Ignatius, 1 February 2009, Humbled Economic Masters at Davos, The Washington Post,www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013002726.html, 14 October 2009, NEWS, Redburn, Tom, 28 January 2009, A Rallying Cry to Claw Back Bonuses, DealBook, The New York Times,dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/a-rallying-cry-to-claw-back-bonuses/, 14 October 2009,

Academic career

Taleb changed careers and became a mathematical researcher and philosophical essayist in 2006, and has held positions at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, at University of Massachusetts Amherst, at London Business School, and at Oxford University. He has been Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering since 2008.WEB,engineering.nyu.edu/people/nassim-nicholas-taleb, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Anon., 2008, News: Press Room: ‘Hottest Thinker in the World’ Joins Faculty, at NYU-Poly (online), 8 September 2008, accessed 7 May 2014.John F. Kelly, 2008, Nassim Nicolas Taleb, Author of the National Bestseller, The Black Swan, Joins Polytechnic Institute of NYU {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120329075549archive.poly.edu/press/_doc/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb_joins_Polytechnic.pdf |date=29 March 2012 }}, at NYU-Poly (press release), 3 October 2008, accessed 7 May 2014. He was Distinguished Research Scholar at the Said Business School BT Center, University of Oxford from 2009 to 2013.{{citation |url=http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ |title=Oxford Said School of Business |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121021121657www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/bt/directory/Pages/default.aspx |archive-date=21 October 2012 |access-date=28 December 2016 }}Taleb is co-Editor in Chief of the academic journal Risk and Decision Analysis (since September 2014),IOS Press, 2014, News: New Co-Editor-in-Chief Risk and Decision Analysis, at IOS Press (online), 19 September 2014, accessed 7 May 2014. jointly teaches regular courses with Paul Wilmott in London (19th time, March 2015),Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Home Page, Lecture Page, at fooledbyrandomness.com (online), accessed 9 May 2015. and occasionally participates in teaching courses toward the Certificate in Quantitative Finance.“Certificate in Quantitative Finance – Course Guide,” at Wilmott, 2008 (online), see WEB,www.wilmott.com/cqf_brochure.pdf, Archived copy, 9 May 2015, dead,www.wilmott.com/cqf_brochure.pdf," title="web.archive.org/web/20120916182524www.wilmott.com/cqf_brochure.pdf,">web.archive.org/web/20120916182524www.wilmott.com/cqf_brochure.pdf, 16 September 2012, , accessed 9 May 2015. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute.WEB,necsi.edu/faculty, Faculty, New England Complex Systems Institute,

{{Anchor|Writing career}}Writing career

Taleb’s five volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled Incerto, covers the following books: Fooled by Randomness (2001), The Black Swan (2007–2010), The Bed of Procrustes (2010), Antifragile (2012), and Skin in the Game (2018). It was originally published in November 2016 including only the first four books. The fifth book was added in August 2019.His first non-technical book, Fooled by Randomness, about the underestimation of the role of randomness in life, published in 2001, was selected by Fortune as one of the smartest 75 books known.NEWS, Useem, Jerry, The Smartest Books We Know,money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/03/21/8254826/index.htm, 28 August 2013, Fortune, 21 March 2005, His second non-technical book, (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable|The Black Swan), about unpredictable events, was published in 2007, selling close to three million copies (as of February 2011). It spent 36 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list,WEB,www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm,www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20110226142024www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20110226142024www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm, dead, 26 February 2011, Charlie Rose Talks to Nassim Taleb, Business Week, 24 February 2011, 7 May 2015, 17 as hardcover and 19 weeks as paperback,NEWS,www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2011-01-16/paperback-nonfiction/list.html, The New York Times, Jennifer, Schuessler, Hardcover, and was translated into 31 languages. The book has been credited with predicting the banking and economic crisis of 2008.NEWS, Carole Cadwalladr, Carole, Cadwalladr, 24 November 2012,www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/24/nassim-taleb-antifragile-finance-interview, Nassim Taleb: my rules for life, The Guardian, 7 May 2015, NEWS, David Brooks (cultural commentator), David, Brooks, The New York Times, Not only did Taleb have an explanation for the crisis, but he saw it coming,www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/opinion/28brooks.html?_r=0, The Behavioral Revolution, 27 October 2008, In a 2008 article in The Times, the journalist Bryan Appleyard described Taleb as “now the hottest thinker in the world”. Daniel Kahneman proposed the inclusion of Taleb’s name among the world’s top intellectuals, saying “Taleb has changed the way many people think about uncertainty, particularly in the financial markets. His book, The Black Swan, is an original and audacious analysis of the ways in which humans try to make sense of unexpected events.“WEB, Kahneman, Daniel, Daniel Kahneman, 2008, How Could You Not Include ...,foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4365, dead,www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4365," title="web.archive.org/web/20090329025248www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4365,">web.archive.org/web/20090329025248www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4365, 29 March 2009, 14 October 2009, Foreign Policy, A book of aphorisms, (The Bed of Procrustes|The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms), was released in December 2010.The fourth book of his Incerto series—(Antifragile (book)|Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder)—was published in November 2012.The fifth book of his Incerto series—(Skin in the Game (book)|Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life)—was published in February 2018.Taleb’s non-technical writing style has been described as mixing a narrative, often semi-autobiographical style with short philosophical tales and historical and scientific commentary. The sales of Taleb’s first two books garnered an advance of $4 million, for a follow-up book on anti-fragility.

Ideas and theories

(File:Genealogy map of topics treated by Nassim Taleb.jpg|thumb|Genealogy map of topics treated by Nassim Taleb)Taleb’s book (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms|The Bed of Procrustes) summarizes the central problem: “we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas”. Taleb disagrees with Platonic (i.e., theoretical) approaches to reality to the extent that they lead people to have the wrong map of reality, rather than no map at all. He opposes most economic and grand social science theorizing, which in his view, suffers acutely from the problem of overuse of Plato’s theory of forms. Based on these and other constructions, he advocates for what he calls a “black swan robust” society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events.He has also proposed that biological, economic, and other systems exhibit an ability to benefit and grow from volatility—including particular types of random errors and events—a characteristic of these systems that he terms antifragility.Antoine Danchin, Philippe M. Binder, & Stanislas Noria, 2011, Antifragility and Tinkering in Biology (and in Business) Flexibility Provides an Efficient Epigenetic Way to Manage Risk, Genes 2(4):998–1016, {{doi|10.3390/genes2040998Review}}, accessed 7 May 2015.Antoine Danchin, 2012, Innovation & Technology: The Anti-Fragile Life of the Economy, at Project Syndicate (online), 2 April 2012, accessed 7 May 2015. Relatedly, he also believes that universities are better at public relations and claiming credit than generating knowledge. He argues that knowledge and technology are usually generated by what he calls “stochastic tinkering” rather than by top-down directed research,Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2001, The Birth of Stochastic Science {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208203350edge.org/q2007/q07_5.html#taleb |date=8 December 2008 }}, at Edge (online), 11 September 2001, accessed 7 May 2015.Ma’n BarāzÄ«, 2009, Lebanon’s rational fools: From the roots of the “economic qabaday” till the 2009 depression election... conflicting tale of paradigms and economic change, Beirut, Lebanon: Data & Investment Consult – Lebanon, p. 182, accessed 7 May 2015.{{rp|182}} and has proposed option-like experimentation as a way to outperform directed research as a method of scientific discovery, an approach he terms convex tinkering.Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012, (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder), Random House ({{ISBN|0679645276}}) and Penguin Books ({{ISBN|0718197909}}), accessed 7 May 2015.{{rp|181ff, 213ff, 236ff}}Taleb has called for cancellation of the Nobel Prize in Economics, saying that the damage from economic theories can be devastating.Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007, “Opinion: The pseudo-science hurting markets,” at Financial Times (online), 23 October 2007, see weblink and weblink, accessed 7 May 2014.NEWS, Cox, Adam,www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68R2SK20100928, Blame Nobel for crisis, says author of ‘Black Swan, Reuters, 28 September 2010, He opposes top-down knowledge as an academic illusion.PODCAST,www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/03/taleb_on_the_fi.html, Taleb on the Financial Crisis, Russ Roberts, The Library of Economics and Liberty, Together with Espen Gaarder Haug, Taleb asserts that option pricing is determined in a “heuristic way” by operators, not by a model, and that models are “lecturing birds on how to fly”. Teacher and author Pablo Triana has explored this topic with reference to Haug and Taleb,Triana, Pablo. Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories Destroy the Financial Markets? Wiley Publishing (2009). and says that perhaps Taleb is correct to urge that banks be treated as utilities forbidden to take potentially lethal risks, while hedge funds and other unregulated entities should be able to do what they want.NEWS, Garcia, Cardiff de Alejo,www.efinancialnews.com/story/2009-06-12/q-and-a-part-ii-alternatives-to-measuring-risk, Q&A Part II: Alternatives to measuring risk, Financial News, 12 June 2009, In his writings, Taleb has identified and discussed the error of comparing real-world randomness with the “structured randomness” in quantum physics where probabilities are computable or games of chance such as casino gambling in which the probabilities are purposefully constructed by the proprietors.Lemaire, Maurice. Mechanics and uncertainty. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.Cooke, D., & Logan, C. (2021). Violent extremism: The practical assessment and management of risk. In Terrorism Risk Assessment Instruments (pp. 99-115). IOS Press.Kushal, Tazim Ridwan Billah, and Mahesh S. Illindala. “Decision Support Framework for Resilience-Oriented Cost-Effective Distributed Generation Expansion in Power Systems.” IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications 57.2 (2020): 1246-1254.NEWS, Cornwell, John,entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article1708246.ece, Random thoughts on the road to riches, The Sunday Times, 29 April 2007, Taleb calls this the “ludic fallacy”. He argues that predictive models suffer from Platonism, gravitating towards mathematical purity and failing to take some key ideas into account, such as: the impossibility of possessing all relevant information, that small unknown variations in the data can have a huge impact, and flawed theories/models that are based on empirical data and that fail to consider events that have not taken place, but could have taken place. Discussing the ludic fallacy in The Black Swan, he writes, “The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly, in both computational and mental effort.“In the second edition of The Black Swan, he posited that the foundations of quantitative economics are faulty and highly self-referential. He states that statistics is fundamentally incomplete as a field, as it cannot predict the risk of rare events, a problem that is acute in proportion to the rarity of these events. With the mathematician Raphael Douady, he called the problem statistical undecidability (Douady and Taleb, 2010).WEB, Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Raphael, Douady, Raphael Douady, October 2010, Statistical Undecidability,www.datascienceassn.org/sites/default/files/Statistical%20Undecidability.pdf, 3 December 2020, data science assn, Taleb has described his main challenge as mapping his ideas of “robustification” and “antifragility”, that is, how to live and act in a world we do not understand and build robustness to black swan events. Taleb introduced the idea of the “fourth quadrant” in the exposure domain.Taleb, N. N. (2009). Errors, robustness, and the fourth quadrant. International Journal of Forecasting, 25(4), 744–59 One of its applications is in his definition of the most effective (that is, least fragile) risk management approach: what he calls the “barbell strategy” which is based on avoiding the middle in favor of linear combination of extremes, across all domains from politics to economics to one’s personal life. These are deemed by Taleb to be more robust to estimation errors. For instance, he suggests that investing money in ‘medium risk’ investments is pointless, because risk is difficult, if not impossible to compute. His preferred strategy is to be both hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive at the same time. For example, an investor might put 80 to 90% of their money in extremely safe instruments, such as treasury bills, with the remainder going into highly risky and diversified speculative bets. An alternative suggestion is to engage in highly speculative bets with a limited downside.Taleb asserts that by adopting these strategies a portfolio can be “robust”, that is, gain a positive exposure to black swan events while limiting losses suffered by such random events.Taleb, The Black Swan, pg 207{{rp|207}} Together with Donald Geman and Hélyette Geman, he modeled the “maximum entropy barbell” which consists in “to constrain only what can be constrained (in a robust manner) and to maximize entropy elsewhere”, based on an insight by E. T. Jaynes that economic life increases in entropy under regulatory and other constraints.JOURNAL, Geman, D., Geman, H., Taleb, N. N., Donald Geman, Hélyette Geman, 2015, Tail risk constraints and maximum entropy, Entropy, 17, 6, 3724, 10.3390/e17063724, 1412.7647, 2015Entrp..17.3724G, 2273464, free, Taleb also applies a similar barbell-style approach to health and exercise. Instead of doing steady and moderate exercise daily, he suggests that it is better to do a low-effort exercise such as walking slowly most of the time, while occasionally expending extreme effort. He claims that the human body evolved to live in a random environment, with various unexpected but intense efforts and much rest.BOOK, Nassim Nicholas, Taleb, 2012, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Random House, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, He appeared as a special guest on The Ron Paul Liberty Report on 19 May 2017, and stated his support for a non-interventionist foreign policy.WEB,www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVPQUv6xm4,ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211117/vjVPQUv6xm4, 17 November 2021, live, Black Swans And Interventionistas ... With Special Guest Nassim Nicholas Taleb, RonPaulLibertyReport, 19 May 2017, YouTube, {{cbignore}} Taleb subsequently appeared with Ron PaulWEB,rationalreview.com/archives/290382, Ron Paul Liberty Report, 03/15/18, 16 March 2018, 24 March 2018,rationalreview.com/archives/290382," title="web.archive.org/web/20180319004808rationalreview.com/archives/290382,">web.archive.org/web/20180319004808rationalreview.com/archives/290382, 19 March 2018, dead, and Ralph NaderWEB,ralphnaderradiohour.com/skin-in-the-game/, Skin in the Game – Ralph Nader Radio Hour, ralphnaderradiohour.com, 10 March 2018, 24 March 2018, 22 May 2020,web.archive.org/web/20200522110505/https://ralphnaderradiohour.com/skin-in-the-game/, dead, on their respective shows in support of Skin in the Game, which was dedicated to both men.BOOK,books.google.com/books?id=vqZJDwAAQBAJ&q=%22Ralph+Nader%22&pg=PA32, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life – Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Google Books, 11 April 2018, 978-0425284629, Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2018, Random House Publishing, WEB,gcallah.github.io/BookReviews/taleb.html, Getting Under Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Skin, gcallah.github.io, After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, Taleb publicly supported an aggressive response against Russia and denounced “naive libertarians, who think I’m like them because they like my books.“WEB,medium.com/incerto/a-clash-of-two-systems-47009e9715e2, A Clash of Two Systems, Medium (website), Medium, 19 April 2022, Taleb wrote in Antifragile and in scientific papersTaleb, N. N. (July 2018). (Anti) Fragility and Convex Responses in Medicine. In International Conference on Complex Systems (pp. 299–325). Springer, Cham. that if the statistical structure of habits in modern society differ too greatly from the ancestral environment of humanity, the analysis of consumption should focus less on composition and more on frequency. In other words, studies that ignore the random nature of supply of nutrients are invalid.Taleb co-authored a paper with Yaneer Bar-Yam and Joseph Norman called Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note. The paper published on 26 January 2020, took the position that the SARS-CoV-2 was not being taken seriously enough by policy makers and medical professionals.JOURNAL, Norman, Joseph, Bar-Yam, Yaneer, Nicholas Taleb, Nassim, Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note, New England Complex Systems Institute, 26 January 2020,static1.squarespace.com/static/5b68a4e4a2772c2a206180a1/t/5e2efaa2ff2cf27efbe8fc91/1580137123173/Systemic_Risk_of_Pandemic_via_Novel_Path.pdf, MAGAZINE,www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-isnt-a-black-swan-but-a-portent-of-a-more-fragile-global-system, The Pandemic Isn’t a Black Swan but a Portent of a More Fragile Global System, The New Yorker, 21 April 2020,

Criticism and reactions

Aaron Brown, an author, quantitative analyst and adjunct professor in finance at Yeshiva and Fordham Universities, said regarding The Black Swan that “the book reads as if Taleb has never heard of nonparametric methods, data analysis, visualization tools or robust estimation.“JOURNAL, Brown, Aaron, Aaron Brown (financial author), 2007, Strong language on black swans, American Statistician, 61, 3, 195–97, 10.1198/000313007x220011, 120488719, Nonetheless, he calls the book “essential reading” and urges statisticians to overlook the insults to get the “important philosophic and mathematical truths.” Taleb replied in the second edition of The Black Swan that “One of the most common (but useless) comments I hear is that some solutions can come from ‘robust statistics.’ I wonder how using these techniques can create information where there is none”.(The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable|Black Swan), 2nd, edition, p. 353{{rp|353}} Westfall and Hilbe in 2007 complained that Taleb’s criticism is “often unfounded and sometimes outrageous.“JOURNAL, Westfall, P., Hilbe, J., Joseph Hilbe, 2007, The Black Swan: Praise and Criticism, American Statistician, 61, 3, 193–194, 10.1198/000313007x219383, 120638553, Taleb, writes John Kay, “describes writers and professionals as knaves or fools, mostly fools. His writing is full of irrelevances, asides and colloquialisms, reading like the conversation of a raconteur rather than a tightly argued thesis. But it is hugely enjoyable – compelling but easy to dip into. Yet beneath his rage and mockery are serious issues. The risk management models in use today exclude the very events against which they claim to protect the businesses that employ them. These models import a veneer of technical sophistication ... Quantitative analysts have lulled corporate executives and regulators into an illusory sense of security.“NEWS, Kay, John, John Kay (economist), 27 April 2007, Books: Unimaginable horror [Book review of The Black Swan], Financial Times,www.ft.com/cms/s/0/824ac36c-f134-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html#axzz2HKRVAHY3, 7 May 2016, Berkeley statistician David Freedman said that efforts by statisticians to refute Taleb’s stance have been unconvincing.WEB, Freedman, David A., David Freedman (statistician), Black Ravens, White Shoes, and Case Selection,www.stat.berkeley.edu/~census/crow.pdf, 7 May 2015, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, Taleb contends that statisticians can be pseudoscientists when it comes to risks of rare events and risks of blowups, and mask their incompetence with complicated equations.WEB, Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2013, What We Learn From Firefighters,edge.org/response-detail/23839, 7 May 2015, Edge Foundation, Inc., Simply, one observation in 10,000, that is, one day in 40 years, can explain the bulk of the “kurtosis”, a measure of what we call “fat tails”, that is, how much the distribution under consideration departs from the standard normal distribution, Gaussian, or the role of remote events in determining the total properties. For the U.S. stock market, a single day, Black Monday (1987), the crash of 1987, determined 80% of the kurtosis. The same problem is found with interest and exchange rates, commodities, and other variables. The problem is not just that the data had “fat tails”, something people knew but sort of wanted to forget; it was that we would never be able to determine “how fat” the tails were. Never. The implication is that those tools used in economics that are based on squaring variables (more technically, the Euclidean norm, Euclidean, or norm (mathematics)#p-norm, L2 norm), such as standard deviation, variance, correlation, regression, or value-at-risk, the kind of stuff you find in textbooks, are not valid scientifically (except in some rare cases where the variable is bounded). The so-called “p values” you find in studies have no meaning with economic and financial variables. Even the more sophisticated techniques of stochastic calculus used in mathematical finance do not work in economics except in selected pockets., This stance has attracted criticism: the American Statistical Association devoted the August 2007 issue of The American Statistician to The Black Swan. The magazine offered a mixture of praise and criticism for Taleb’s main points, with a focus on Taleb’s writing style and his representation of the statistical literature. Robert Lund, a mathematics professor at Clemson University, writes that in Black Swan, Taleb is “reckless at times and subject to grandiose overstatements; the professional statistician will find the book ubiquitously naive.“JOURNAL, Lund, Robert, 2007, Revenge of the white swan, American Statistician, 61, 4, 189–92, 10.1198/000313007X219374, 122874205, However, Lund acknowledges that “there are many points where I agree with Taleb,” and writes that “the book is a must” for anyone “remotely interested in finance and/or philosophical probability.“Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes have traded personal attacks, particularly after Taleb’s paper with {{Interlanguage link|Espen Gaarder Haug|no}} on why nobody used the Black–Scholes–Merton formula. Taleb said that Scholes was responsible for the financial crises of 2008, and suggested that “this guy should be in a retirement home doing Sudoku. His funds have blown up twice. He shouldn’t be allowed in Washington to lecture anyone on risk.” Scholes retorted that Taleb simply “popularises ideas and is making money selling books”. Scholes claimed that Taleb does not cite previous literature, and for this reason Taleb is not taken seriously in academia.NEWS, Anuj, Gangahar,www.ft.com/cms/fb971062-0b4c-11dd-8ccf-0000779fd2ac.html, Mispriced risk tests market faith in a prized formula, Financial Times, 16 April 2008, Haug and Taleb (2011) listed hundreds of research documents showing the Black–Scholes formula was not Scholes’ at all, and argued that the economics establishment ignored literature by practitioners and mathematicians (such as Ed Thorp), who had developed a more sophisticated version of the formula.JOURNAL,www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/UG/SM/MATH3075/r/Haug_Taleb_2011.pdf, Option traders use (very) sophisticated heuristics, never the Black–Scholes–Merton formula, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, In an interview on Charlie Rose, Taleb said that he saw that none of the criticism he received for The Black Swan refuted his central point, which convinced him to protect his assets and those of his clients.WEB,charlierose.com/videos/15268, Author Nassim Taleb examines rare events, risk management and his book, “The Black Swan”, Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose (talk show), Charlie Rose, 21 December 2016, When my book came out, I started listening to the criticism, and I realized that nobody attacked my central point. I thought that someone would come up with some convincing argument. Two, three months after the publication, I went for the jugular. I said, this thing is going to go. And, in fact â€“ so., Taleb’s aggressive and clearly directed commentary against parts of the finance industry—e.g., stating at Davos in 2009 that he was “happy” that Lehman Brothers collapsed—has led to reports of personal attacks and possible threats.NEWS,www.wsj.com/articles/SB123457658749086809, The Wall Street Journal, Overheard, 14 February 2009,

Honors

• 2009: Included on the Forbes magazine list of “Most Influential Management Gurus“NEWS,www.forbes.com/2009/10/13/influential-business-thinkers-leadership-thought-leaders-chart.html, Forbes List of the Top Business Thinkers, Klaus, Kneale, 14 October 2009,
• 2011: Included on the Bloomberg 50 most influential people in global financeNEWS,topics.bloomberg.com/the-50-most-influential-people-in-global-finance/, Topics.bloomberg.com, The 50 Most Influential People in Global Finance, 7 May 2015, dead,topics.bloomberg.com/the-50-most-influential-people-in-global-finance/," title="archive.today/20120716235136topics.bloomberg.com/the-50-most-influential-people-in-global-finance/,">archive.today/20120716235136topics.bloomberg.com/the-50-most-influential-people-in-global-finance/, 16 July 2012,
• 2013, 2014, 2015: Included among most influential 100 thought leaders in the world by the Gottlieb Duttweiler InstituteWEB,www.gdi.ch/en/Think-Tank/GDI-News/News-Detail/Thought-Leaders-2014-the-most-influential-thinkers, GDI – Think Tank, Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute,
• 2016: Taleb received an honorary doctorate from the American University of Beirut.WEB, 27 May 2016, Nassim Taleb: Commencement Address 2016,www.aub.edu.lb/commencement/Documents/speeches-16/nassim-taleb.pdf, 10 June 2016, American University of Beirut,
• 2018: Wolfram Innovator Award for contributions to decision making under complicated and less-idealized probabilistic structures using Mathematica.

Major works

Books

Incerto“>

Incerto

Incerto is a group of works by Taleb as philosophical essays on uncertainty. It was bundled into a group of four works in November 2016 {{ISBN|978-0399590450}}. A fifth book, Skin in the Game, was published in February 2018. This fifth book is bundled with the other four works in July 2019 as Incerto (Deluxe Edition) {{ISBN|978-1984819819}}.

• BOOK, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Fooled by Randomness, Random House, New York, 2001, 978-0-8129-7521-5, Second ed., 2005. {{ISBN|1-58799-190-X}}.
• BOOK, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, The Black Swan (Taleb book), Random House and Penguin Books, New York, 2007, 978-1-4000-6351-2, Expanded 2nd ed, 2010 {{ISBN|978-0812973815}}.
• BOOK, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, The Bed of Procrustes, Random House, New York, 2010, 978-1-4000-6997-2, Expanded 2nd ed, 2016 {{ISBN|978-0812982404}}.
• BOOK, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Antifragile (book), Random House, New York, 2012, 978-1-4000-6782-4,
• BOOK, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Skin in the Game (book), Random House, New York, 2018, 978-0-4252-8462-9, (This book was not published with the original bundling of the Incerto series.)

Technical Incerto“>

Technical Incerto

• BOOK, Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails: Real World Preasymptotics, Epistemology, and Applications (Technical Incerto Vol. 1), STEM Academic Press, 2020, 978-1-5445-0805-4,

Other

• BOOK, Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1997, 978-0-471-15280-4,
• BOOK, Nassim Nicholas, Taleb, Pasquale, Cirillo, Pasquale Cirillo, The Logic and Statistics of Fat Tails, Penguin Books, London, 2018, 978-0-1419-8836-8,

Selection of papers

• Taleb, N. N., & West, J. (2023). Working with convex responses: Antifragility from finance to oncology. Entropy, 25(2), 343.
• JOURNAL, Cirillo, P., Taleb, N. N., Tail risk of contagious diseases, Nature Physics, 16, 6, 2020, 606–613

arxiv=2004.08658 s2cid=215828381,

• Taleb, N.N.; Norman, J.; Bar-Yam, Y; (26 January 2020) “Systemic Risk of Pandemic via Novel Pathogens – Coronavirus: A Note”. Academia.edu. Systemic Risk of Pandemic via Novel Pathogens – Coronavirus: A Note
• Taleb, N. N. (2019). Medicine and Risk Transfer. Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, (53), 31-32.
• JOURNAL, Taleb, N. N., Douady, R., Raphael Douady, Mathematical definition, mapping, and detection of (anti)fragility, Quantitative Finance, 13, 11, 2013, 1677–1689

arxiv=1208.1189, 219716527,

• JOURNAL, Taleb, N. N., Unique Option Pricing Measure with neither Dynamic Hedging nor Complete Markets, European Financial Management, 21, 2, 2015, 228–235, 10.1111/eufm.12055, 153841924,
• JOURNAL, Geman, D., Donald Geman, Geman, H., Hélyette Geman, Taleb, N. N., Tail Risk Constraints and Maximum Entropy, Entropy (journal), Entropy, 17, 6, 2015, 1–14, 10.3390/e17063724, 2015Entrp..17.3724G, 1412.7647, 2273464, free,
• JOURNAL, Taleb, N. N., Douady, R., Raphael Douady, On the Super-Additivity and Estimation Biases of Quantile Contributions, (Physica (journal), Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications), 429, 2015, 252–260, 10.1016/j.physa.2015.02.038, 2015PhyA..429..252T, 1405.1791, 23527680,
• JOURNAL, Cirillo, P., Taleb, N. N., On the tail risk of violent conflict and its underestimation, (Physica (journal), Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications), 452, 2016, 29–45, 10.1016/j.physa.2016.01.050, 2016PhyA..452...29C, 1505.04722, 9716627,
• JOURNAL, Taleb, N. N., Election predictions as martingales: an arbitrage approach, Quantitative Finance, 452, 1, 2018, 1–5, 10.1080/14697688.2017.1395230, 1703.06351, 158466482,
• JOURNAL, Taleb, N. N., How much data do you need? An operational, pre-asymptotic metric for fat-tailedness, International Journal of Forecasting, 35, 2, 2018, 677–686, 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.10.003, 1802.05495, 139102471,

See also

• Applications of randomness
• List of American philosophers
• Taleb distribution
• Dragon King Theory

Notes

{{notelist}}

References

{{Reflist}}

External links

{{Commons category|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}

• Nassim Taleb’s home page
• {{IMDb name|2643232}}
• {{Google Scholar id|64BtMdsAAAAJ}}
• {{C-SPAN|1025409}}

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