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    Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
    Unavailable
    Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
    Unavailable
    Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
    Audiobook8 hours

    Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

    Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    Narrated by Joe Ochman

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold new work 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."

    Editor's Note

    High risk, high reward…

    From the author of “The Black Swan” comes a provocative take on why it’s such a risk for modern society to allow so many institutions to not have proper skin in the game. See why it’s better for everyone to assume a fair amount of risk if they want to reap reward.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 27, 2018
    ISBN9780525630913
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Skin in the Game

    4/5

    282 ratings13 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Very dance with information that will need a second maybe a third read.
      This is about life with Skin in the Game vs theory and learning from books.
    • 4/5
      good, although the reader comes across like a cranky old man. a slightly more measured reading might be more sympathetic to the material. great book. provocative and funny.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful book on understanding what it means to put your soul in anything.
    • 4/5
      Really good book like Taleb’s previous one’s. This one focuses more on ethical and moral issues of life as the name suggests. However the author requires so much attention from the reader that this book doesn’t really suit for listening while commuting or driving. The book requires a real depth of understanding.
    • 5/5
      This book re-arranges common sense in an unpleasant yet great way.I will read it again..
    • 5/5
      Nassim is brilliant as always. My brain gained 0.5lb of mass after reading this
    • 5/5
      Do not miss reading this book. Excellantissme ! And read all the other books of Taleb's Incerto series as well.
    • 2/5
      I'm sure there's a lot to learn from an author like Taleb. I just found myself confused between intellectual references and angry rants. I wasn't fully able to distill some Golden nuggets hidden here. Also, there were multiple references to his other works which made me feel like a person who missed a few books in a sequel series. I am not sure if I like this as much as his previous books like "The Black Swan".
    • 4/5
      I’ve enjoyed all of Taleb’s books. I didn’t realize until this one how much they are intentionally connected. Skin in the Game conveys a wide range of astute conclusions centered on the asymmetry of information and rationales as dominant influencers of social behavior and outcomes. The core idea reiterated throughout is that we can rely only on the agent who has a direct stake on the outcome of whatever interelationship is involved. As always, Taleb is straightforward, philosophically rigorous, and still quite entertaining.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Invaluable and worth multiple revisits - truly mind expanding and original. Read the Incerto series in order for maximum impact.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      As with Taleb’s other works, this reads like a bitter pill that, upon initially swallowing tastes a little nasty, but is ultimately for our betterment. Those who’re prepared to listen past the frequent rants will be rewarded with important lifelong lessons about the sovereignty of practical over theoretical knowledge, the whole being unpredictable by the sum of its parts, spotting intelligent idiots, and questioning claims made by so-called experts- highly recommended!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Can summarize this whole book in less than 100 words. and too much negativity. not really worth the time imho

      If Taleb really thinks the world is so random, why is he such an a**hole? It seems he doesn't subscribe to his own theories.

      good luck listening to 8 hours of a child ranting

      4 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Worthwhile reading for some insight porn, but hard to really engage as Taleb is so abrasive or annoyingly gossipy, slagging Dawkins, Piketty, Thaler and Sunstein, Pinker, Sam Harris, Krugman, Sontag