Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Thought experiments are a classic tool used by many great thinkers. They enable us to explore impossible situations and predict their implications and outcomes. Mastering thought experiments can help …
Innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Doers and thinkers from Shakespeare to Jobs, liberally “stole” inspiration from the doers and thinkers who came before. Here’s how to do it right. *** “If I have …
We read for the same reasons we have conversations — to enrich our lives. Reading helps us to think, feel, and reflect — not only upon ourselves and others but upon our ideas, and our relationship …
Markets tend to favor unequal distributions of market share and profits, with a few leaders emerging in any industry. Winner-take-all markets are hard to disrupt and suppress the entry of new players …
The best colloquial definition of risk may be the following: “Risk means more things can happen than will happen.” We found it through the inimitable Howard Marks, but it’s a quote …
“All that glitters is not gold,” the saying goes. The aesthetics of things often fool us. People we call ignorant might not be ignorant. People we call smart might not be smart. The Green …
“Each of us human beings, for example, is the product of an enormously long sequence of accidents, any of which could have turned out differently.” — Murray Gell-Mann *** What parts of …
Nassim Taleb, the modern philosopher best known for his ideas on Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragility, gave his first commencement address at an American University in Beirut. Like him or …
The narrative fallacy leads us to see events as stories, with logical chains of cause and effect. Stories help us make sense of the world. However, if we’re not aware of the narrative fallacy it can …
The Great Mental Models Volumes One and Two are out. Learn more about the project here. The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of …
A telling excerpt from an interview of Warren Buffett (below) on the value of reading. Seems like he’s taking the opposite approach to Nassim Taleb in some ways. Interviewer: How do you keep up …
The fact that new information exists about the past in general means that we have an incomplete roadmap about history. There is a necessary fallibility … if you will. In The Black Swan, Nassim …
The Lucretius Problem is a mental defect where we assume the worst-case event that has happened is the worst-case event that can happen. In so doing, we fail to understand that the worst event that …
I loved Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb. This is the first popular book he wrote, the book that helped propel him into an intellectual …
If you’re looking for something to read that will improve your ability as an investor, I’d recommend any of the books below. All 12 of them are deeply informative and will leave an impact on you. 1. …
While a lot of people casually use the word, not many people have read: Antifragile, where Nassim Taleb defines it for us. Just as being clear on what constitutes a black swan allows us to better …