risk

Robust survives shocks; antifragile gains from them — so ask not whether a thing will break but which way volatility moves it.#antifragility-vs-robustness

Combine extreme safety with extreme risk and refuse the middle: floor the downside absolutely, leave the upside open.#barbell-strategy

History is driven by a few unpredictable outliers that we explain confidently only after they happen.#black-swans-rule-history

When the reference class does not exist yet, ask which outcome is the default and what would have to change to get another.#default-vs-what-must-change

A small chance of ruin is not a small risk — once you are out of the sequence, the expected value you would have collected goes with you.#ergodicity-and-ruin

Intervention carries costs that stay invisible when the harm is diffuse and the cure is credited.#iatrogenics

A fully optimised life cannot accommodate luck — unallocated time and money are what let you say yes.#keep-slack

For non-perishable things, age predicts survival — what has lasted a century will likely outlast what launched last year.#lindy-effect

Real uncertainty is not a casino — dice have known odds, life does not, and models built on games mislead exactly where it matters.#ludic-fallacy

Buy far enough below your estimate of value that being materially wrong about the estimate still leaves you whole.#margin-of-safety

Probability theory works on repeatable events; the decisions that matter most are usually one-offs it was never built for.#measurable-vs-unknowable

Some domains are bounded and some are scalable — using bell-curve intuitions in the second is the central error of modern risk management.#mediocristan-vs-extremistan

Don't take advice from someone who bears none of the cost of being wrong.#no-opinion-without-exposure

Quantifying a risk changes how it feels, not how likely it is — the number’s real work is often psychological.#numbers-domesticate-fear

Optionality pays when you do not need to be right — many cheap tries, each with a capped loss and an open upside.#optionality

Regression to the mean is real but useless as a timing device — knowing the average pulls you back says nothing about when.#regression-is-not-destiny

Risk is a modern invention — for most of history the future was fate, and the idea it could be measured is only a few centuries old.#risk-was-invented

Margin of safety exists so that survival never depends on your forecast being right.#room-for-error

The record was written by what survived — the failures that would refute the thesis left no documents.#silent-evidence

Eliminate what makes you fragile before pursuing upside — debt and obligation prevent the risk-taking that opportunity requires.#subtract-fragility-first

You only ever see the winners — the graveyard of identical strategies that failed is silent and uncounted.#survivorship-bias

A tiny number of events produce most of the outcome — so most of what you do is supposed to not matter.#tails-drive-everything