Skin in the Game

Would the world worked this way.

The rate of fresh insight that NNT delivers means you can't lose focus for a second lest you lose one. I really loved the first half of this book. It's not meant to educate so much as to be a vehicle for the authors prodigious intellect. He never stops for a second to explain a term which is a little frustrating sometimes as his self-expressor vs other-educator ratio makes him feel somewhat arrogant sometimes. I loved the premise of the book around the significance of “skin in the game” which is such an important concept that is paid much too little attention to in our culture. The later half of the book I found less engaging. I would have liked to see the concept of SITG applied in different domains such as the all-important one of our own lives in which I feel people live as if they don't have skin in the game.

My review of this will resemble that of Antifragile a lot. Seems like I have a love/hate reader relation with Taleb. On some things I absolutely agree, on the others I couldn't disagree more. I think it's a book you should read. But don't go about following it to the letter. Again I found it very funny how he accuses researchers cherry-picking cases to make examples and hand waving things that don't fit the narrative away when he's doing the exact same thing. Everyone he dislikes is an IYI or semi-intellectual. There's no space for gray in his world, only black-and-white. I simply can't endorse that kind of viewpoint.

Better put together than previous books, unfortunately you need to go through some of the roughness in previous books (e.g. Black Swan) to “get” the most out of this one.

3.5

There are a lot of unpopular ideas in this book, even more than previous works of Taleb. It challenges some of my dearly held beliefs acquired through reading science books and skepticism!

I like Taleb's works mostly because he challenges ideas and beliefs from a novel point of view, even if I don't end up agreeing with his views, it is a good practice to expose my ideas to that challenge from time to time.

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Pros: good ideas
Cons: poorly written

Too much contempt for others is what looses me in Taleb. He has interesting points of view but I got tired with the constant need to attack someone to make a point...