## Metadata - Author: [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]] - Full Title: Skin in the Game - Category: #books ## Highlights - Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions. ([Location 241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=241)) - Evolution can only happen if risk of extinction is present. Further, There is no evolution without skin in the game. ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=282)) - So we will skip Kant’s drastic approach for one main reason: Universal behavior is great on paper, disastrous in practice. Why? As we will belabor ad nauseam in this book, we are local and practical animals, sensitive to scale. The small is not the large; the tangible is not the abstract; the emotional is not the logical. Just as we argued that micro works better than macro, it is best to avoid going to the very general when saying hello to your garage attendant. ([Location 394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=394)) - Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice. ([Location 426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=426)) - There is always an element of fools of randomness and crooks of randomness in matters of uncertainty; one has a lack of understanding, the second has warped incentives. One, the fool, takes risks he doesn’t understand, mistaking his own past luck for skills, the other, the crook, transfers risks to others. ([Location 428](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=428)) - People who are not morally independent tend to fit ethics to their profession (with a minimum of spinning), rather than find a profession that fits their ethics. ([Location 621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=621)) - I am never bothered by normal people; it is the bull***tter in the “intellectual” profession who bothers me. Seeing the psychologist Steven Pinker making pronouncements about things intellectual has a similar effect to encountering a drive-in Burger King while hiking in the middle of a national park. ([Location 804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B075HYVP7C&location=804))