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The James Altucher Show

Ep. 45 - Nassim Taleb: Why You Should Embrace Uncertainty

The James Altucher Show

James Altucher

Education, Business

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2014

⏱️ 101 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nassim Taleb, author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, joins The James Altucher Show to talk about technology and how different systems handle disorder.Just as humans evolve, technology is constantly being upgraded and replaced with new concepts and ideas.Today, we use technology in almost every aspect of your lives. But do we really understand the advantages and disadvantages to constantly being computerized?In Nassim's book, The Black Swan, he highlighted for readers the unusual and unpredictable events that underlie almost everything about our world. Now with his book, Antifragile, readers are presented with why we should embrace these uncertainties.The ideas and concepts that Nassim presents today for our listeners are beyond anything you have heard before.Nassim and James talk about several ways that disorder in your life will actually make you stronger. As Nassim tells James in the interview, "If you don't have variability in your life, you are not human."The key is to take these shocks and disruptions and become, as Nassim says, antifragile, in turn making you stronger, more creative, and better able to adapt to each new challenge you face.Nothing is certain in this world, and this episode will have you questioning everything you thought you knew. ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

0:06.5

This is the James Alteter Show on the Standsbury radio network.

0:10.6

Very excited to have author Nassim Taleb come on my podcast.

0:23.1

He just told me it's his only the second interview he's given this year, author of

0:28.7

full by randomness the black swan and my favorite anti-fragile lots of great ideas that

0:35.0

come up in our conversation.

0:36.5

So I hope you listen.

0:37.8

Thanks.

0:39.0

Here's Nassim.

0:42.8

Let's look at technology.

0:44.9

Okay.

0:45.9

Technology works beautifully when it destroys bad technology.

0:51.4

And in anti-fragile I discuss the Lindy effect who tells you pretty much the following.

0:56.7

If something has been around for 20 years odds are it has 20 more years to go.

1:01.2

Yeah.

1:02.2

If something's around the technology and idea that's not perishable.

1:05.3

For a human you don't have that effect.

1:08.5

For a technology you have that effect because there's no upper bound on life of a technology.

1:13.4

So if I see an old man and his grandson I can say statistically that bearing some problem

1:19.9

with the grandson, some disease, some whatever problem that the grandson will survive the grandfather

1:28.1

or whereas with technology it's exactly the opposite.

1:30.4

If you see very young technology and old one out young technology is not done survive.

...

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