What do you think about Taleb’s aphorisms?

[Anonymous No.18601105]

>Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.

>Most people write so they can remember things; I write to forget.

>What they call philosophy I call literature; what they call literature I call journalism; what they call journalism I call gossip; and what they call gossip I call (generously) voyeurism.

>Writers are remembered for their best work, politicians for their worst mistakes, and businessmen are almost never remembered.

>Critics may appear to blame the author for not writing the book they wanted to read; but in truth they are blaming him for writing the book they wanted, but were unable, to write.

>Literature is not about promoting qualities, rather, airbrushing (your) defects.

>For pleasure, read one chapter by Nabokov. For punishment, two.

>There is a distinction between expressive hypochondria and literature, just as there is one between self-help and philosophy.

>You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.

>No author should be considered as having failed until he starts teaching others about writing.

>Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process.

>A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.

>Just as there are authors who enjoy having written and others who enjoy writing, there are books you enjoy reading and others you enjoy having read.

>A genius is someone with flaws harder to imitate than his qualities.

>With regular books, read the text and skip the footnotes; with those written by academics, read the footnotes and skip the text; and with business books, skip both the text and the footnotes.

>Double a man’s erudition; you will halve his citations.

>Losers, when commenting on the works of someone patently more impressive, feel obligated to unnecessarily bring down their subject by expressing what he is not (“he is not a genius, but…”; “while he is no Leonardo…”) instead of expressing what he is.

>You are alive in inverse proportion to the density of clichés in your writing.

(1/2)

[Anonymous No.18601110]

>What we call “business books” is an eliminative category invented by bookstores for writings that have no depth, no style, no empirical rigor, and no linguistic sophistication.

>Just like poets and artists, bureaucrats are born, not made; it takes normal humans extraordinary effort to keep attention on to keep attention on such boring tasks.

>The costs of specialization: architects build to impress other architects; models are thin to impress other models; academics write to impress other academics; filmmakers try to impress other filmmakers; painters impress art dealers; but authors who write to impress book editors tend to fail.

>It is a waste of emotions to answer critics; better to stay in print long after they are dead.

>I can predict when an author is about to plagiarize me, and poorly so when he writes that Taleb “popularized” the theory of Black Swan events.

>Newspaper readers exposed to real prose are like deaf persons at a Puccini opera: they may like a thing or two while wondering, “what’s the point?”

>Some books cannot be summarized (real literature, poetry); some can be compressed to about ten pages; the majority to zero pages.

>The exponential information age is like a verbally incontinent person: he talks more and more as fewer and fewer people listen.

>What we call fiction is, when you look deep, much less fictional than nonfiction; but it is usually less imaginative.

>It’s much harder to write a book review for a book you’ve read than for a book you haven’t read.

>Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.

>Today, we mostly face the choice between those who write clearly about a subject they don’t understand and those who write poorly about a subject they don’t understand.

>The information-rich Dark Ages: in 2010, 600,000 books were published, just in English, with few memorable quotes. Circa AD zero, a handful of books were written. In spite of the few that survived, there are loads of quotes.

>In the past, most were ignorant, one in a thousand were refined enough to talk to. Today, literacy is higher, but thanks to progress, the media, and finance, only one in ten thousand.

>We are better at (involuntarily) doing out of the box than (voluntarily) thinking out of the box.

>Half of suckerhood is not realizing that what you don’t like might be loved by someone else (hence by you, later), and the reverse.

>It is much less dangerous to think like a man of action than to act like a man of thought.

>Literature comes alive when covering up vices, defects, weaknesses, and confusions; it dies with every trace of preaching.

(2/2)

[Anonymous No.18601130]

>I am Phoenician before I am a Middle Easterner and Mediterranean before I am a Phoenician

[Anonymous No.18601131]

Actually, a lot of really great stuff in there.

[Anonymous No.18601137]

>>18601105
>Taleb

[Anonymous No.18601145]

>>18601105
>>Most people write so they can remember things; I write to forget
Lol that's true. Somehow I stop thinking about stuff when I write it down.

[Anonymous No.18601154]

These are pretty great for the most part, but where did the economists and businesspeople touch him?

[Anonymous No.18601168]

>>18601110
>Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.
Fuck, he's onto me

[Anonymous No.18601179]

Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing" and 50 other aphorisms on writing: a collected work

[Anonymous No.18601195]

>>18601105
>>18601110
Unironically sub-Icycalm tier.

[Anonymous No.18601283]

>>18601110
>What we call fiction is, when you look deep, much less fictional than nonfiction
woah....

[Anonymous No.18601284]

Love Taleb but ive never read his books. Are they worth it for a neet?

[Anonymous No.18601336]

>>18601284
antifragile is the one

[Anonymous No.18601362]

>>18601110
>The information-rich Dark Ages: in 2010, 600,000 books were published, just in English, with few memorable quotes. Circa AD zero, a handful of books were written. In spite of the few that survived, there are loads of quotes.
well fucking duh. why do you think those few survived? because they were worth preserving

[Anonymous No.18601450]

>>18601105
>>18601110
dind't read lol, I don't read dirty arabs

[Anonymous No.18601696]

bump

[Anonymous No.18602384]

>>18601105
>>With regular books, read the text and skip the footnotes; with those written by academics, read the footnotes and skip the text; and with business books, skip both the text and the footnotes.
This is why I haven't read his books yet, I suppose. I just collect what anon say about him.

[Anonymous No.18602393]

>>18601154
He knows about (((them))) and their tricks

[Anonymous No.18602406]

>>18601450
Based

[Anonymous No.18602414]

>>18601105
>Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
I completely agree, this was a big realization for me when I got it.

[Anonymous No.18602670]

>>18602414
Has a ring of James Carse from Finite and Infinite Games

[Anonymous No.18602703]

>>18601137
>plebbitor
Go back.

[Anonymous No.18602706]

Completely and utterly based.

IYI seething.

[Anonymous No.18603174]

>>18601105
90% of Taleb's writing is dogshit and just repeats the thoughts of other writers. The other 10% is worth it though.

[Anonymous No.18603362]

>>18602393
He does lol

[Anonymous No.18603420]

>>18601105
They're trying to be smart and don't have anything worthwhile to say.