Skin in the Game

I have been hearing about Taleb a lot for a long time, and I picked this one after a colleague was showering praise on this book.

SITG by Taleb is refreshingly frustrating. Yes, many things he says might lack nuance, but he seems to know his shit. He is not foolishly dressing down Thaler or Pinker or Sam Harris. But I don't see the depth of this topic. I would give four stars because of the novelty of ideas and for being common-sensically contrarian. On the first listen, what he says is new, nod-worthy and also gives that aha-moment. But to take his views seriously, I need to "read" the book and dig deep, instead of "listening" to this. My audiobook listening to SITG satisfied my goal. I want to understand in broad stroke why Taleb is being hyped up. In a way, he has "racked his gun" and got my attention with SITG.

I will have to dig into the Taleb rabbit hole in the next weeks by listening to podcasts and other critiques of him to understand him better. I will revisit my ratings in some months.

One of Taleb’s characteristics, that I admire, is his brutal honesty. I, therefore, believe that is is only fair to treat him the same. I didn’t like the book. It’s not only that he repeats things that he has written in his Incerto books, and especially in Antifragility (in my humble opinion, his best book), or in his various articles in the past few years. The book lucks structure, it is mostly thoughts put on paper randomly. I didn't particularly enjoy Taleb's overpowering arrogance and contempt towards others. The book is a wild rant towards almost everybody, including politicians, consultants, managers with suits (not sure about those not wearing suits), professors, even architects.

The most interesting part of the book is the chapter about Ergodicity. If you haven’t got the book you can read about it on Medium.

Taleb, when asked why he didn't wear a tie, he replied. “one part arrogance, one part aesthetics, one part convenience.” Following his example I would say that Skin in the Game is, one part probability and risk management, one part amusing personal anecdotes, one part bullshit.