Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The philosopher of fragility who argues that modern civilization traded a robust, decentralized wisdom tradition for brittle expert systems - and that this trade is actively destroying us while we congratulate ourselves on progress.
Arguably the greatest living philosopher, Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the harsh, cantankerous and ruthless critique of all things modern. Building on the ideas of the ancient Greek culture and philosophy he tells us how the modern civilization has exchanged a system which had worked for thousands of years for ideas which were never tested in real life and yet which were adopted with zest for they sounded nice or got votes in electoral democracy. Weighing systems and institutions on a scale created by himself he considers the West to be either robust which will eventually collapse to fragile, which will collapse at the first touch of randomness.
Select Works
The Incerto series (philosophical essays on uncertainty):
- Fooled by Randomness (2001) – How chance shapes markets and lives more than skill.
- The Black Swan (2007) – Impact of rare, unpredictable events on history and finance.
- The Bed of Procrustes (2010) – Aphorisms on modernity, ethics, and intellectual humility.
- Antifragile (2012) – Systems that gain from disorder, stress, and volatility.
- Skin in the Game (2018) – Why asymmetries of risk undermine ethics and institutions.
