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 . 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.”

Reader Reviews

Ajay

(5/5)

Nov 24, 2024

Some really good insights in a very small book -1. "When it comes to the country, I'm a libertarian, when it comes to the state, I'm a republican, when it comes to my city, I'm a Democrat, when it comes to my family, I'm a Socialist".2. Cost benefit analysis is not possible when there is a probability of Ruin.3. The west is in the process of committing ideological suicide (on minority rule).4. Its easier to Macrobullshit than it is to Microbullshit.5. What matters is not what a person has, but w...

Martin Brochhaus

(1/5)

First of all: I have no idea who the author is or why he matters or why *he thinks* he matters so much. There seems to be somewhat of a personal cult around him, so whatever, I'm going in unbiased.The first 19% (can you even believe that?!) of this book is prologue and can only be described as a lose string of consciousness from a person that very obviously thinks very highly of themselves and seems to hate everything and everyone.Nothing in this book makes any sense. First of all, the chapters

Pouri

“The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing.”― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Siah

(3/5)

By the end I was so tired of hearing a man child complaining about literally everything in the world. He complains about teachers, politicians, academics, doctors. There are a few good ideas but they are all wrapped in Talib’s aura of crap.

Gints Dreimanis

Hey, another one who doesn't give a fuck. NNT is a bit of a diva, and it is obvious that he has some beef with a lot of people. He certainly sounds right. But is he? I don't know. The book revolves around the notion that people not having skin in the game will fuck us up, somehow. Turns out that the idea of skin in the game can be applied to a wide variety of fields and professions. Especially the ones Taleb doesn't like, like academics, policy makers, journalists. Oh, and rationality as you kno...

Anton

(4/5)

3.5* - rounding up to 4.Be warned: this book is a ranty, largely unstructured, flow-of-consciousness type stuff. It has an equal probability or either delighting the reader or driving them mad. I personally enjoy the erudite style of Taleb's argumentation and find his references and vignettes of the 'times gone by' intellectually stimulating. Also, the black-and-white bluntness of his position makes the book feel refreshing. You may not agree with Taleb's side, but you are never left in doubt wh...

Ill D

Taleb's the hero.

Ryan Boissonneault

561

Skin in the Game is at the same time thought-provoking and original but also contradictory and sometimes absurd. Let’s start with the cons:1. I certainly won’t be the first to notice that Taleb can be mean-spirited. But why does he insist on presenting his views in this way? The communication of his ideas, often profound, does not require a mean-spirited or condescending tone. For however brilliant Taleb thinks he is, his skills in persuasion are severely lacking; he’s alienating a significant r...

☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣

I’m improperly awed and professionally depressed by this guy. While I’ve been in love with the concept of asymmetry since, like, forever, he puts on it such an excruciating spin that… a lot of professions suddenly attain the unmistakable bullshit (or maybe swanshit!) flavor.Anyway, this book lost a bit of its charm due to aggressive and seemingly random things aggregated together. I'm sure it's another case of 'it's not you, it's me', still, I felt the previous volumes were better grounded and m...

Satyajeet

(2/5)

Cherry-picking meets ignorance of human nature meets naive interpretation of history meets erroneous assumptions.If you cherry-pick the data, you can make ANY ridiculous hypothesis sound convincing.Unlike those who complain about Taleb’s unresolved teenage angst, his thin-skinned hubris, or his lack of civility, I couldn’t care less about his crass remarks. My problem is with the ideas in this book, not its author, although I do question the intelligence of its author when his prose lapses into

Daniel Clausen

Update July 22, 2021: Read the book a 4th time. When I got annoyed with vulgarity or repetition, I skipped a bit. I usually never had to skip more than a paragraph or two. The book read much more smoothly. I also read this book a page or two at a time at the beach or on a bus. It's a great book to read for a third time this way. Update September 4, 2020. I changed my mind. I decided to rate this book after all. Any book that has passages that are better on the third reading deserves five stars.

Ivan

In this book #4, Taleb is more arrogant and pretentious than ever. You can never let go of the feeling that this book is about him, rather than any other topic. He's become profoundly obnoxious and negative. Despite some good points in the book, reading it feels like carrying a burden. In this new book Taleb goes to extra lengths to attack David Runciman, head of the politics department at Cambridge, and a Guardian book reviewer who had torn apart his previous "Antifragile" book. Runciman's crit...

Muwaffaq

I wanted to like this and I certainly did at the beginning. All of his insults are complex, original and amusing but he insults so many people so frequently that the process itself becomes tedious. I do enjoy his historical anecdotes, but again there are a large volume of them, and not always obviously with a point, other than a demonstration of his research or recall abilities. It is the fact that he criticises many individuals in passing with a specific but cryptic reference to something they

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Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

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