#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.
