Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Narrated by Joe Ochman

Overview

#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.”

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

Taleb provides some simple but often unrealized considerations on how people understand and operate within the power differentials of everyday life. Narrator Joe Ochman has a deep and gravelly voice that effectively draws in listeners and maintains their attention with a deliberate delivery and strong projection. However, Ochman's tone mixed with Taleb's prose makes the audiobook seem like a screed against other intellectuals, whom he can't stop attacking. Inevitably, the advice he provides makes sense, yet Ochman's execution is likely to alienate listeners even though it seems in alignment with the prose and word choices. Too often, Taleb’s advice on understanding the underpinnings of social power sound judgmental and condescending to listeners. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb
 
“The problem with Taleb is not that he’s an asshole. He is an asshole. The problem with Taleb is that he is right.”—Dan from Prague, Czech Republic (Twitter)
 
“The most prophetic voice of all . . . [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher . . . someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone.”—John Gray, GQ
 
“Taleb grabs on to core problems that others ignore, or don’t see, and shakes them like an attack dog on a leg.”—Greg from New York (Twitter)
 
“For my wife and me, Antifragile is an annual reread.”—Colle from Richmond, Virginia (Twitter)
 
“I read Antifragile four times. First, to get the wisdom to survive. Second, as a memorial statement for Fat Tony. Third, as Das Kapital with correct mathematics. Fourth, as ethics to learn a good way to die.”—Tamitake from Tokyo, Japan (Twitter)
 
“November . . . time for my annual reread of Antifragile.”—Johann from Vienna, Austria (Twitter)
 
“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.”—The Wall Street Journal

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

Taleb provides some simple but often unrealized considerations on how people understand and operate within the power differentials of everyday life. Narrator Joe Ochman has a deep and gravelly voice that effectively draws in listeners and maintains their attention with a deliberate delivery and strong projection. However, Ochman's tone mixed with Taleb's prose makes the audiobook seem like a screed against other intellectuals, whom he can't stop attacking. Inevitably, the advice he provides makes sense, yet Ochman's execution is likely to alienate listeners even though it seems in alignment with the prose and word choices. Too often, Taleb’s advice on understanding the underpinnings of social power sound judgmental and condescending to listeners. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-03-20
Noted statistician and business philosopher Taleb (Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, 2012, etc.) continues to inform us, none too gently, that we've got it all wrong."The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding." The author argues that too much of our received wisdom in governance, finance, and other realms comes from academics and bureaucrats who aren't taking calculated risks to advance civilization. Taleb reminds us that this "skin in the game" can be quite literal: One poor Persian judge was flayed alive for misconduct, with his son assuming the job on a seat made from his father's flesh. "Skin in the game," by the author's reckoning, is more metaphorical, but nonetheless, it means that almost all of us who are not shielded by institutions and retainers "pay a price for [our] mistakes" and with any luck learn from them. Taleb's take on things is largely libertarian, though he approvingly quotes a source as saying that this libertarianism is best applied at the federal level, while at the interpersonal level of family and friends, we should be socialists—i.e., share with kin, not with coercers. Even there—and even though Ron Paul is one of the book's dedicatees—Taleb is no ideological purist. As he notes, even though the ideal of freedom is "one's first most essential good," some regulation is in order "if you can't effectively sue." The book is written at a high intellectual level, despite the author's dismissal of intellectualism, and contains some daunting math (relegated to an appendix, happily). Taleb is at his best when he simplifies his arguments down to rules and speaks as a mentor to would-be statist youth, as when he counsels, "You must start a business. Put yourself on the line, start a business."Smart and provocative, updating Robert Nozick and Friedrich Hayek while providing plenty of grist for liberal counterargument.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171819880
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	506,516

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Skin in the Game"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos