Skin in the Game
The phrase "skin in the game" is one we have often heard but have rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it's also an astonishingly complex worldview that, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows in this book, applies to literally all aspects of our lives. In his inimitable style, Taleb pulls on everything from Antaeus the Giant to Hammurabi to Donald Trump to Seneca to the ethics of disagreement to create a jaw-dropping tapestry for understanding our world in a brand new way. The phrase "skin in the game" means that you do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they do, and to how much of their necks they are putting on the line. This willingness to accept one's own risks is an essential attribute of people in all walks of life. Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about those who control our military, finances, religions, and so much more-- and shows how "skin in the game" applies to all aspects of our lives.
Stats for nerds
30recommend
90mentions
78people
2015–2026years
38% recommend56% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb becomes highly relevant here
- People not liking Taleb and then dismissing him because he can be rude has always been one of the strangest things that so many people do.
I remember about halfway through Skin in the Game, after being put off by most of what I'd been reading, that the gestalt shift happened and it finally clicked. It's probably one of the best texts I've ever read on a specific type of conservatism. I don't like that I agreed with it, but the guy makes a very, very convincing argument.
- Follow up with a post one year from now. Tell us then how you will have acted in the world since the surgery — with regard to past, present, and future.
Apropos, I recommend Taleb's Skin in the Game to both you and all others on the thread who may not have read it. (If you haven't, perhaps during your recovery.) But, as Taleb points out, talk is cheap, and so is reading and living vicariously through texts. Actions speak louder than words, and we must do and act in the world, not merely chat about it.
- I would recommend Taleb's book Skin In the Game for this type of question. The best choices are highly dependent on the individual's preference for risk and whether or not they count their existing stock as "extra" or as "income."
- In general the Incerto series by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game) was worth it. The Selfish Gene, System thinking A primer, I am a strange loop, Sapiens are some books that I read recently that had a lasting impression.
- I mean this is why Nassim Taleb got extremely controversial with his via negativa approach during his Antifragile and Skin in the Game period (I am a huge fan of his writing).
>Drink no liquid that isn’t at least a thousand years old (wine, water, coffee). Eat nothing invented or re-engineered by humans.
The argument is straightforward, that human beings are a wildly complex multi-variate system and that throwing wrenches into a complex multi-variate system is generally a horrible idea (this heuristic is inverted and encouraged when the that system is breaking down).
Is there a bit of a naturalistic fallacy here? I think sort of, but not significant one. The idea that we could screw up our bodies is obviously there. The flip side of this coin is that I see something as trivial as depression and/or most other non-fatal ailments as completely independent of the evolutionary process, such that experimenting on ourselves to improve our life (again, quality of life over time should not be directly related to probability of genetic reproduction success, as is made obvious from the gay uncle hypothesis).
The implications of this extend to where you live, so a bunch of genetically German hippies living in California, pretending to be one with nature, really are being dishonest about the health benefits they pretend to have, when the argument pretty much insists that the region of evolutionary development occurs will be crucial to the benefits of that evolution. Taleb himself lives in NYC, not his genetic homeland of Lebanon.
We really just need to be more honest about how little we know about health... especially health outside of the highly reproductive window (13-45).
