Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Probability teaches us to accept uncertainty and develop strategies to manage the unknown.
In this quote, Nassim Nicholas Taleb emphasizes that probability is not simply about calculating numerical odds; rather, it is fundamentally about acknowledging the inherent uncertainty in our understanding of the world. He advocates for a deeper comprehension of how to navigate our ignorance through probabilistic thinking, implying that life is filled with uncertainties that we must learn to embrace rather than ignore.
Themes
ProbabilityUncertaintyKnowledgeIgnoranceMethods
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about statistics, one might say, 'As Nassim Nicholas Taleb noted, probability is the acceptance of uncertainty.'
More from Nassim Nicholas Taleb
All quotes →Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Similar quotes
Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.
Dorianne LauxRead
The Church is designed to nourish the imperfect, the struggling, and the exhausted.
Dieter F. UchtdorfRead
Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read more and thought less about money.
Martin AmisRead
She supposed that houses, after all - like the lives that were lived in them - were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, which counted, rather than the bricks.
Sarah WatersRead
Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible - the new normal.
Michel FoucaultRead