"I have a heuristic that tells me if a country is well functioning and that heuristic is how boring the front-page of their newspaper is."

"Localism is not a political system. It's a structure."

"The Arabs figured it out. Their hospitality is second to none. When one stranger visits, they treat him like a king. Once they are up to 5, they kill them"

"Journalists are not interested in what happened. They are interested in what can grab your attention."

"Good fences make good neighbors"

"Rent seeking is someone who uses privilege to get an income that does not contribute to economic activity"

"Never describe, compare or access the effectiveness of political systems without reference to scale"

"You should not create risk then walk away from it"

43:30 "maybe the number 5 is the limit" -- idk if it's related but none of the native Australian languages had a number system that went beyond five; due to their way of life, they didn't have many countable possessions (e.g. cattle) so they only dealt with individual people (e.g. not "my 3 kids" but "jim, joe, and jane") and individual things (e.g. not "my 3 spears" but "my hunting spear, my fishing spear, and my ceremonial spear" -- all with actual names, not "x type of spear" of course)

"Things develop then the state comes to kill it"

Amazing talk

"Universalists love groups but hate individuals. The larger the group, the more abstract the relationship is"

"You can be racist to groups but not to individuals"

"Without scale nothing works"

"Things develop and then, the state comes to kill it" eg France, Egypt, China

These books have been translated to my language, Czech. I love all Taleb's books.

This will be very helpful for an upcoming paper in political philosophy class. I wonder what Dr. Taleb thinks about how to reduce "systemic racism."

"Those that eat like you is how you identify. #localism"

What happens when a locality/canton becomes so "attractive" that people from other localities start flocking to it for economical or other self-interest reasons? Won't that canton have to grow geographically and engulf the neighboring cantons? You basically get New York, London, which are unmanageable according to Taleb, do you have to keep splitting nation states over time?

"Anything zero-sum is unethical to me"

Amazing. Hope Lebanese and everyone else that would benefit from Taleb’s work get the message.

Genius

He is so fucking brilliant

What is "immune", or however you spell it?

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn." - Hillel the Elder - Shabbath folio:31a, Babylonian Talmud

"Make laws along geographic lines not sectarian lines."

1:17:00 Everyones bodylanguage goes from relaxed and attentative to "uh,oh here we go" when she challenges him

44:00

"When an Israeli and Palestinian meet, they get along. Once the troops arrive, it's a whole different story. This is something not picked up by the systems"

this guy gets it. sounds a lot like a voluntaryist

Nassim doesn't understand his own ideas when it comes to Uber rating. He probably is, but most people aren't very scrutinizing with their rating, and so the bias is heavily toward 5 stars. 4.90 is not bad, but nothing special. Anything below 4.75 is bad.

🥴

Why is he posting a haplogroup map lol? Haplogroups are diverse everywhere and this map just shows the biggest percentage (around 30%), leaving the rest of the haplogroups omitted.

11:30 takes quote from bible COMPLETELY out of context

decentralised network? Point: I hope you get the functioning of the brain and the neural system.. Biology 101.

Switzerland hardly had a civil war. Civilians were not involved: Both sides raised proper armies commanded by Generals. The so called war lasted 2 weeks with fewer than 100 dead, compared to the estimated 150'000 dead in the Lebanese civil war. Furthermore, they were only two sides to the Swiss conflict, whereas Lebanon had 18 well entrenched religions. The swiss Tax is NOT the lowest in western Europe. NNT speaks as it the Swiss system can be replicated to Russia and Lenin was stupid when he was in Switzerland and didn't realise how politically stable the country was. NNT analysis lacks the depts of an expert in politics because politics is not his magisteria.

the language is arabic and not lebanese. Mr. Taleb should have corrected her

Wow, for a guy as smart as he seems to be, his understanding of the golden rule is pretty unintelligent.

The incoherence is laughable. He is a total fraud, I’m addition to being repulsive 🤮 He uses confusion to trick and yet he talks about BS detecting.

Full of contradictions. Cringe