#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A bold work from the author of The Black Swan that challenges
many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward politics and religion finance and
personal responsibility In his most provocative and practical book yet one of the foremost
thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world succeed in a profession
contribute to a fair and just society detect nonsense and influence others. Citing examples
ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump Nassim Nicholas Taleb
shows how the willingness to accept one's own risks is an essential attribute of heroes saints
and flourishing people in all walks of life. As always both accessible and iconoclastic
Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military
interventions make financial investments and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights:
• For social justice focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer
the risks to others as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning
your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry
better than thousands of laws and regulations. • Ethical rules aren't universal. You're part
of a group larger than you but it's still smaller than humanity in general. • Minorities not
majorities run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities
imposing their tastes and ethics on others. • You can be an intellectual yet still be an
idiot. "Educated philistines" have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb
diets. • Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can
build muscle better than expensive new machines. • True religion is commitment not just
faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you're willing to risk for
it. The phrase "skin in the game" is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly
dissect. It is the backbone of risk management but it's also an astonishingly rich worldview
that as Taleb shows in this book applies to all aspects of our lives. 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."
