Skin in the Game
Books | Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy
4.1
(141)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#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.”
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Author
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Pages
304
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Published Date
2018-02-27
ISBN
0425284638 9780425284636
Community ReviewsSee all
"Full review and highlights at <a href="https://books.max-nova.com/skin-in-the-game">https://books.max-nova.com/skin-in-the-game</a><br/><br/>Taleb strikes again with "Skin in the Game". This incendiary book is the source of his notorious "Intellectual Yet Idiot" essay, as well as several other fiery gems, such as "How to Legally Own Another Person." This book feels a bit more discombobulated than his previous works - it is really a collection of essays only mildly related to each other by the idea that fair exposure to downside risk is important for a well-functioning society. Yet his fresh, clear argumentation makes this book a joy to read. It's trademark Taleb with a pompous wit, brutal naming of names, and a profound breadth of source material. In fact, Taleb's arguments range so widely that I'm reluctant to accept that he's really qualified to weigh in on some of these topics (GMOs? Really?). Has he really discovered a universal law with such wide applicability? Who are you to question?? Do you even lift bro?!<br/><br/>No one is safe from Taleb - be it Thomas Piketty (whose flood of data blinded him to "the rise of what is called the knowledge economy") or Barack Obama (who used office to enrich himself, accepting "a sum of more than $40 million to write his memoirs"). Much of his ire is focused on the global policy elites and "rich slaves" who presume to have the rest of us shoulder all of the risks. One of his key policy recommendations is that:<blockquote>The way to make society more equal is by forcing (through skin in the game) the rich to be subjected to the risk of exiting from the 1 percent.</blockquote>Most of "Skin in the Game" felt like a straightforward (although a bit rebellious and very "manly") application of incentive theory with a dash of anecdotal spice. There wasn't much in here that surprised me, although I did love Taleb's quotes about the moral exploitability of family men. His take on economic mobility in the US vs. Europe was also news to me - I had no idea that "more than half of all Americans will spend a year in the top 10 percent."<br/><br/>The "science vs. scientism" section of the book also caught my eye because of its relevance to my 2017 reading theme on "The Integrity of Western Science." Taleb historically has little respect for the ivory tower of academia, and he lays it on thick in this book, calling out entire fields (economics, social science, etc.) as "charlatanic" because of their disconnect from reality or consequences. He also condemns "scientism" which views science as a bunch of complicated models rather than a skeptical mindset. Speaking of skepticism, Taleb doesn't explicitly comment about climate science, but he does say:<blockquote>Take for now that forecasting, especially when done with “science,” is often the last refuge of the charlatan, and has been so since the beginning of times.</blockquote>Then Taleb starts to get into the philosophy of science. He doesn't have a very fair reading of Karl Popper (see "Theory and Reality" for a great intro to the philosophy of science) even though Popper's ideas about falsifiability are the intellectual precursors of Taleb's whole "skin in the game" schtick. Taleb also loses some points for his endorsement of the "emergent behavior" view - see Yudkovsky's thoughts on "emergence" in "Rationality from AI to Zombies".<br/><br/>I also got a good chuckle out of Taleb's hat tip to the notorious anarchist David Graeber (see my review of his "Debt: The First 5,000 Years")."
Max Nova
"I have been hearing about Taleb a lot for a long time, and I picked this one after a colleague was showering praise on this book.<br/><br/>SITG by Taleb is refreshingly frustrating. Yes, many things he says might lack nuance, but he seems to know his ****. He is not foolishly dressing down Thaler or Pinker or Sam Harris. But I don't see the depth of this topic. I would give four stars because of the novelty of ideas and for being common-sensically contrarian. On the first listen, what he says is new, nod-worthy and also gives that aha-moment. But to take his views seriously, I need to "read" the book and dig deep, instead of "listening" to this. My audiobook listening to SITG satisfied my goal. I want to understand in broad stroke why Taleb is being hyped up. In a way, he has "racked his gun" and got my attention with SITG. <br/><br/>I will have to dig into the Taleb rabbit hole in the next weeks by listening to podcasts and other critiques of him to understand him better. I will revisit my ratings in some months."
Santhosh Guru