Aren’t tomatoes fruit?
Botanically? Yes
Legally? I think it depends where you live.
I see your smartarse and raise you.
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no… just no… pls don’t get started on this… 
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Deal.
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…you’re not kidding…
I think I’m going to go with Antifragile.
Is reading Black Swan even necessary anymore after one has lived through Long-Term Capital Mgmt, 9/11, and the 2008 financial crisis?
I read the excerpt from Skin in the Game, powerful, and timely. I am dealing with some shit in a community in which my family owns a property, and his point about a virtuous minority just kicked me in the ass.
Thanks for the recommendation.
People in the meeting (who should know better given their status in the company, but that’s another discussion) were looking at a small grove of trees in an otherwise large, healthy and expansive forest and suggesting we need to address this grove immediately or we’ve failed this particular project, when all other evidence suggests that is not the most efficient course of action given current constraints on resources and goals…
In the context of my comment, I’d go with thoughtlessness. It wasn’t really egregious, more me being annoyed by their seeming lack of understanding of the information being presented and their obstinate loyalty to a relatively insignificant issue within the scope of the project.
They were placing disproportionate weight on something that is empirically insignificant in the scope of the overall project and clinging to the their insistence that it be addressed post haste. I suspect they emotionally attached.
That’s a good choice.
Black Swan isn’t only about financial crashes, but managing unexpected events with low probability and massive consequences in general.
From Taleb’s earlier writings, I wonder if this excerpt was worth listening to:
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Mate, I wish black swans were low probability - they’re everywhere here. Even on our flag. They’re scary when they get aggressive.
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I was getting ready to talk about my own meeting this week (my first in a couple of years, I’ve taken a half-time job with the hospital’s clinic). I got into a very brief, very polite skirmish over a patient course-of-action question and consider it similarly a disproportionate attachment to a goal with questionable value. So: a therapist and a medication provider both received letters from a shared patient, a Jehovah’s Witness. The letters are handwritten, long, and earnest. The question was what to do. The therapist was thinking ignore it. The med nurse practitioner feels she’ll acknowledge it, but isn’t scheduled with the pt until May. I thought the therapist should thank the pt for thinking of him, and move on (“so, how was your week?”), then if the pt brings it back up deal with it however. A psychiatrist insisted (seems an insistent type, which frankly I am, too) that the only way to go would be to ignore it, and let the subconscious process play out. And I’m thinking…religious whackaloonery or not, you get a letter someone took time to write and you say “thank you for thinking of me” like your mother hopefully taught you to do when given an unwanted gift. You don’t fuck with them on purpose by refusing to deal with it “on a conscious level.” For what purpose would you avoid clear and direct communication in favor of Freudian beard-stroking? And the Witnesses are required to witness a certain amount, so this patient may just be checking boxes. I don’t know. It just seemed an overreaction to what is probably a relatively mundane event, as well as an overreactive response.
It makes me wonder if I want to read any of these books, because I feel that I am already perpetually irritated by the shortsightedness around me, both in small ways (weird response to letters) and in larger ways (let’s all grab our pitchforks over Seuss books no one has even heard of with one exception, while meanwhile the government less and less pretends to represent us, regardless of party).
I’m not sure I need these feelings to be more acute. 
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I’ve gotten those letters a couple times now.
That seems to be their new thing, hand written letters. Probably for the same reasons you stated.
Currently Reading “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)” by Katie Mack. It explores the theories on the eventual end of the universe.
A Gathering of Secrets by Linda Castillo.
About halfway through “thinking fast and slow”. Fascinating book so far, and much, much more academic based than 99% of the “self-improvement” books out there. Can be a little dense, but god it gets you thinking
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YES!!!
If you enjoy thinking fast and slow, you’d probably also enjoy predictably irrational (Dan ariely) , Indistractable (Nir Eyal) and Friction\
Also, highly recommend the Behavioural Grooves podcast
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Writing all those down for future reference. Read a ton of psychology, but anything close to behavioral economics is a relatively new field to me. Unless you count freakanomics, but honestly that’s more fun read than anything if you ask me.
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Misbehaving by Thaler is really great intro to behavioural Econ. It goes into the history of behavioural Econ from the founder and covers the basics. Well written too
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I agree with this but …
I found it a snooze fest - but that’s my own personal opinion…
@atlas13 Thinking…is one of my favorite books … I’ve read Predictably Irrational mentioned by anna and it’s well worth the read … I have not read the other ones, though.
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Well if both of y’all recommend it, then I suppose I pretty much have to read it. I both love and hate what I am learning so far. I want humans to be rational actors far, far more than they appear to be. (Which incidentally was my actual takeaway from my undergrad poli-sci research on voters)
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Released today.
The Bounty (book 7) in the Fox and O Hare series by Janet Evanovich and Steve Hamilton