No skin in the game

Take this claim: old people is right 90 percent of the time but a psychologist is right only 10 percent of the time. Thats interesting for sure but where is the data? Why should I believe this? He also claims that - because of the Lindy effect - the only theory that is worthwhile is theory that has "survived" the test of time.

Like what the ancients wrote about: honor, love, cognitive dissonance. Of course he conveniently leaves out all the counter examples. Oppression, tyranny and dictatorship has survived the test of time. Are those things better ways of organizing a society than democracy? Machiavelli is a classic, and Aristotle maintained that society should be ruled by a thinking class of philosophers of course, who did you think?

Is that good theory? It's sloppy thinking and I'm disappointed. In fact, Taleb writes off whole professions with the stroke of his pen. The all-knowing, omnipotent thinker that he seem to think he is. Instead of actual corroboration of the many many, many claims, we get to read some ancient story about the Assyrians, or a very technical statistical term that seem to obscure Talebs claims instead of illuminating them.

It's funny actually with the terminology in this book. I read a lot of science books and I rarely come across a book that uses so many obscure terms and concepts. For a guy who dislikes scientists and scientism , he sure likes to sound like one. In summary, the book is severely incoherent - ancient stories are mixed with Talebs observations about modern life, his dismissal of his thought up enemies, and disjointed anectodes from his life.

Somehow I get the feeling that the book is actually about Taleb himself. 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 3. You may not agree with Taleb's side, but you are never left in doubt which side that is.

If you have never read Taleb before I urge you to start with the Black Swan. This new book is an awful place to get to know the author. You need to warm up to him first And if you hated Antifragile. Well, grab something else to read : Skin in the Game is unlikely to be your thing either.

View 2 comments. Mar 25, Ajay rated it it was amazing. Some really good insights in a very small book - 1. Cost benefit analysis is not possible when there is a probability of Ruin. The west is in the process of committing ideological suicide on minority rule. Its easier to Macrobullshit than it is to Microbullshit.

What matters is not what a person has, but w Some really good insights in a very small book - 1. What matters is not what a person has, but what he or she is afraid of losing. Don't tell me what you think, tell me whats in your portfolio. 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. Mar 20, Ill D rated it it was amazing. Taleb's the hero. Apr 16, Martin Brochhaus rated it did not like it Shelves: rubbish , philosophy , never-finished. There seems to be somewhat of a personal cult around him, so whatever, I'm going in unbiased. Nothing in this book makes any sense. First of all, the chapters are called "Books" and the sub-chapters are called "Chapters". These so called "Books" range from pages each, so maybe they should rather be called what they are: Loosely coupled essays.

Secondly, the massively long and incredibly badly written introduction seems to serve four pointless purposes: 1. Advertise the author's other works 2. Wet your appetite with fancy promises as to what great insights you will gain from this book, for example "How is it that we have more slaves today than we did during Roman times" 3.

Lots and lots of virtue signalling, the author assures us that he has always lived the life of a saint, having lots of skin in the game. An entire sub-chapter telling us in advance, that this book cannot be judged by a reviewer unless he rereads it many times, because this book was specifically designed for rereading - so I guess you can stop reading my review here, because I didn't reread this book and I never will, because it is trash.

I was hoping that after the horrible prologue the author would show a little more discipline and try to produce something with less shock-value and insults and a little more coherence, but after I forced my way through "Book 2 - A First Look At Agency", it was clear that my hopes would not be met.

The book continues to be a lose string of consciousness without any clear structure, without any data or sources backing up any claims, without any clear goal of what we are trying to establish here. The chapter names, for example, are just colourful phrases and at the end of each chapter I had to go back to the chapter title, asking myself "what the fuck was this chapter supposed to be about? It seems more to be a way for the author to formulate his own personal philosophy and communicate his worldview - which probably isn't even a bad worldview, but it's so utterly confusing laid out that I don't think it's worth the pain of engaging with it.

Ironically, he quotes a lot of snippets from old Greek and Roman texts and at some point even points out that you should always read the original source, don't rely on intermediary wannabe philosophers like himself. So, there you have it: Go read Marcus Aurelius and other practitioners of Stoicism that is what I will do now, anyways. The most hilarious thing about this book is this: The author complains that academic papers now a days are worded very complex to the point of being unreadable just to make them seem more groundbreaking.

Well, the hypocrisy is mind blowing here because just a few pages away from that rant the author basically writes something like "you know, this book is pretty simple and probably fits into 60 pages" - and yet he went ahead and blew it up with rants, insults, inside jokes and pretentious bullshit, leaving us with an incomprehensible text - to make us think that it is more groundbreaking?

This book is neither entertaining nor insightful. I have seen other works of this author and his tweets are unavoidable when you are into bitcoin - I have come to the conclusion that this man can't write a straight sentence even if his life depended on it. Waste of money. Feb 27, Gaurav Mathur rated it liked it. Aah, Taleb. I have read all his non-technical books at least twice, so of course it was with great enthusiasm that I bought this Bit of a bummer.

SITG has some great insights, but most of them were shared on his Twitter account, and his posts on Medium. But of course applaud the man for pursuing his ideas for more than 2 decades. Have learned quite a lo Aah, Taleb. Have learned quite a lot, and there is a door to new knowledge through his references to other great thinkers.

Mar 09, Harsh Gupta rated it it was amazing. Brilliant book. Better get some "skin in the game" :D Brilliant book. Better get some "skin in the game" :D Mar 15, Stephan rated it did not like it. Taleb perfectly summarizes my problems with his book. The general theme of the book is that one should be wary of those making decisions who lack consequences of those decisions. The book shines when he focuses on that major theme.

His perspectives on every from foreign affairs and the economy were both fascinating and and fair. It is when he dives into his personal disagreements from recent years that he begins to bluster.

But he can't seem to go very long without going back to those three things over and over again. And he refuses to take his own advice on those topics. Rather than bothering to look at what those he disagrees with stands for, he just insults them and insinuates delusional smear campaigns against himself.

And while this may be a cherry picked quote from the book, as it is blatantly dangerous, I feel it needs to be said. Taleb tells his readers not to listen to their doctors when they are advised to take statins. This advice could literally kill people, and is the reason I felt the need to lower it to only 1 star.

In the end he sounds like an old man yelling at clouds. He is living a lonely life and wants to spend entire chapters explaining why he is better than everyone that has a different lifestyle.

Like any old man he has some good advice mixed in with the incoherent rambling. Jul 07, Vance rated it liked it Shelves: effective-leadership. The point that skin in the game is necessary for accurate examination of changes in the economy and policies is informative and one that economists often overlook, though I think Taleb exaggerates the rate economists overlook this point, at least from mainline economists. I give this one 3 stars. Feb 09, Yevgeniy Brikman rated it really liked it.

As with most of Taleb's books, this one is poorly organized, full of childish insults and bravado, and makes some totally absurd claims. But this book also contains some startling, deep insights and ideas. It's frustrating to have to wade through a lot of bullshit to get to these interesting ideas, but when you finally get there, the pay off is pretty damn good.

Here are some of the biggest insights I got from this book: 1. The central thesis is that "skin in the game" is essential for systems t As with most of Taleb's books, this one is poorly organized, full of childish insults and bravado, and makes some totally absurd claims. The central thesis is that "skin in the game" is essential for systems to work efficiently and fairly. Any actor who makes a decision must bear the risk of that decision.

Otherwise, you end up with an asymmetry where one actor may get all the upside, and everyone else is stuck with all the potential downside. Examples: - No skin in the game: politician who argues for war, but has no risk of actually dying in that war. Creating a world where everyone has skin in whatever game they are playing may be more effective than adding more laws. Systems work completely differently at different scales and you can't generalize from one scale to another You can't always understand larger systems from smaller parts.

Examples: - You can't understand the emergent behavior of an ant colony from the behavior of one ant. Due to the curse of dimensionality, small increases in size can lead to massive increases in complexity. For example, we still don't fully understand how the neurons of the tape worm's central nervous system work—it's just too complicated.

But going up to neurons may double that complexity; going to neurons may double it again; and so on. The human brain, for comparison, has billion neurons.

While our TV-brand of politics pretends like it's all about "left" vs "right", Taleb has this amazing quote from the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham: "I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. The Lindy effect: for some things, mortality rate decreases with time.

Broadway actors used to gather at Lindy's delicatessen after each performance, and they noticed a pattern where plays that had been running for 20 days were likely to survive another 20 days; plays that had ran for days were likely to survive another days; those that ran for days would run another ; and so on. The same effect can be seen in many other places: e. In other words, the life expectancy of some things is proportional to their current age.

The longer that thing has survived, the longer it's likely to keep surviving, so the mortality rate decreases with time. As a general rule, this is why you should prefer things that have survived longer to those that are newer: e.

That old book has survived so long for a reason! The same goes for ideas, art, and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. Rule of the minority In many situations, a tiny minority e.

Examples: - A large percentage of food in the US is kosher, even though only a tiny percentage of the population follows kosher practices - Schools and planes ban peanuts even though only a tiny percentage of the population is allergic to them This arises due to an asymmetry where the minority group can only tolerate one option but the majority group can tolerate either, and so we often accede to the demands of the minority group: e.

This is why "Merry Christmas" became "Happy Holidays", even in a country where the vast majority of people celebrate Christmas. This is also why all it takes is a single angry old lady complaining regularly to change the laws in a small town.

More generally, many great changes in society happen not via consensus or voting, but because some small passionate minority typically with skin in the game pushes for it. This is also why, even in a society that preaches tolerance, you cannot be tolerant of intolerance.

That is, even if you firmly believe in tolerance of all viewpoints and free speech, you cannot be tolerant of, for example, Nazi movements. Even a small minority of intolerant people can overrun a tolerant society. Ergodicity To understand ergodicity, you must first understand the difference between time averaging and ensemble averaging. Time averaging is taking the average value of one process running over a long period of time; ensemble averaging is taking the average of many copies of the process representing all the different states of that process running for a fixed amount of time.

Example: if the process is rolling two 6-side dice, then time averaging is where a single person rolls the dice thousands of times, and you take the average value of all of those rolls, and ensemble averaging is where you look at all the possible states from one roll , , , A system is ergodic if the time average equals the ensemble average. The example with the two dice is ergodic, because the average value of all the possible states will equal the average value of one person rolling the dice over and over on a long enough timeline.

However, not all systems are ergodic! You got heads twice and tails twice, but have less money than you started with! This can lead to counter-intuitive results: "When many people play the game a fixed number of times, the average return is positive, but when a fixed number of people play the game many times, they should expect to lose most of their money. If a society has perfect ergodicity, then, over a long enough timeline, everyone would spend some amount of time in each of the lower, middle, and upper classes i.

In order for social mobility to be possible, it's not enough for the lower classes to be able to move up. It also needs to be possible for the upper classes to move down. By ensuring they have skin in the game!

The upper class must be exposed to risk and downside; for if there's no downside for them, that means there's no upside for the everyone else. This is visibly not the same for the more static—but nominally more equal—Europe. For instance, only 10 percent of the wealthiest five hundred American people or dynasties were so thirty years ago; more than 60 percent on the French list are heirs and a third of the richest Europeans were the richest centuries ago.

In Florence, it was just revealed that things are even worse: the same handful of families have kept the wealth for five centuries.

Risk and ruin In systems that contain a risk of total ruin—e. This is especially true on repeated playthroughs and in systems that are not ergodic. In such system, risks from seemingly independent events add up!

For example, you can't use normal "expected value" calculations on Russian roulette. The ensemble average across all possible states of multiple playthroughs of Russian roulette is positive; but the time average for a single person playing the game repeatedly is almost always death.

We often don't properly take into account these ideas of ruin, ergodicity, and risks adding up over repeated events. Taleb has some great examples of this: "All risks are not equal. This cannot be said about the doubling of the number of people killed by terrorism over the same period. Or that more people were killed by their own furniture than by terrorism. Just consider that: it is impossible for a billion people to sleep with Kim Kardashian even her , but that there is a non-zero probability that a multiplicative process a pandemic causes such a number of Ebola deaths.

Or even if such events were not multiplicative, say, terrorism, there is a probability of actions such as polluting the water supply that can cause extreme deviations. The other argument is one of feedback: if terrorism casualties are low, it is because of vigilance we tend to search passengers before boarding planes , and the argument that such vigilance is superfluous indicates a severe flaw in reasoning.

Your bathtub is not trying to kill you. Random insights The book meanders quite a bit, so I had a few fun insights in my notes that seem largely disconnected from everything else: - Does a merchant have the moral obligation to to divulge all relevant information to a buyer? Example: the merchant is bringing grain from Egypt to a city experiencing famine. The merchant knows he can get a high price for his grain now, but he also knows more boats with grain are on the way, so the price will drop.

Does he have the moral obligation to tell the buyer that those other boats are on the way? That's because the doctor who doesn't fit the stereotype, to build a successful career, had to get there through ability and accomplishment, without being able to lean on looks.

Random bullshit This book also contained a lot of childish, absurd, bullshit. Some of it was clearly Taleb having a personal feud with a critic or rival. Some of it was him making claims about things where he is not an expert or where he has no skin in the game: e. It takes an order of magnitude more energy to refute bullshit than to spout it, so I won't waste time arguing against Taleb's more absurd claims, and merely note down here that I don't agree with many of them.

Feb 28, Lucas Carlson rated it it was amazing. Love this book. Much smaller in number of words than his others, but equally dense if not more so with ideas. If I had to distill everything Taleb into one idea, I would focus on the last few sentences of this latest book, which I will summarize in my own memory of Love this book. The SEC requires companies to report on insider ownership or trading of a company's securities, which is made available to the public.

Article Sources. Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work. These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate.

You can learn more about the standards we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in our editorial policy. Compare Accounts. The offers that appear in this table are from partnerships from which Investopedia receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where listings appear. Investopedia does not include all offers available in the marketplace. What Is Insider Buying?

Insider buying is the legal purchase of shares by a senior executive or director of a company. What Is Front-Running in Stocks? Front-running is trading stocks or any asset based on insider knowledge of a future transaction that will affect its price. It is illegal in most cases. What Is a Seasoned Security? A seasoned security is one that has been publicly traded in the secondary market long enough that there won't be much in the way of short-term effects as a result of its IPO. Value Investing: How to Invest Like Warren Buffett Value investors like Warren Buffett select undervalued stocks trading at less than their intrinsic book value that have long-term potential.

Partner Links. Related Articles. Learn more. Alternative to "skin in the game" Ask Question. Asked 11 years, 1 month ago. Active 3 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 57k times. Is there an alternative idiom with the same meaning as "skin in the game"? Improve this question. Ken Aspeslagh. Ken Aspeslagh Ken Aspeslagh 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. That depends: what does "skin in the game" mean? Having skin in the game means that you are making a personal investment in an endeavor, usually referring to money invested.

Great bounty, but wouldn't this warrant a new question seeking antonyms for "skin in the game"? I thought of "watching life from the sidelines" when I read your reasons for starting the bounty. Epidermis in the competition.

A less colorful alternative to "skin in the game" might be "something [or anything ] on the line. Show 6 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. You could also say "dog in the fight" as in "He doesn't have a dog in this fight. Improve this answer.

Robusto Robusto k 38 38 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Add a comment. Buffett's original intention equated money with skin because losing either would be painful. Other alternatives include: He has a piece of the action He has money on the line He has something to lose He is a stakeholder. John Satta John Satta 4, 1 1 gold badge 26 26 silver badges 30 30 bronze badges.

But they are not replacements as you can say "He has some skin in the game. They pass laws willy nilly and enable legislation that is not in our best interests. Moreover, politicians usually exempt themselves from their own legislation; this alone is a moral hazard they cannot defend on any level or from any perspective. The most egregious example of this lack of skin in the game is The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act informally known as Obamacare.

The members of the House and Senate provided themselves with special healthcare insurance that far surpassed the provisions of Obamacare. I see these political exemptions as red flags of warning. All concerned citizens should push back against these actions and we should begin to vote all incumbents out of office.

Turnabout is fair play, especially in the political realm.