Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.

Skin in the game: Hidden Asymmetries in daily life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a collection of essays, philosophical discussion and commentary on events, personalities, and things that are all around us and experienced by us on a daily basis but we never stop and think about. As the title suggests its about asymmetries in daily life. For example, have you ever come across a person who benefits if you benefits but has nothing to lose even if you lose everything. Who falls under this category well...brokers, traders, policy makers and high level administration.

Let's take another example, have you ever thought how 3-4% minority population can enforce their rule on 95% majority population? Think about Kosher food. Even though majority of population is not Jewish, most of the products are Kosher. Why? Well simple people who eat Kosher will not eat non-Kosher food but people who do not eat Kosher food will eat Kosher food with no reservations. Asymmetry.

This book is full of such practical discussions and offers a higher level analysis to things that we take for granted. The basis premise of this book as the title says is that to understand anything you need skin in the game. You cannot understand things by philosophical discussions. Most of the academicians have no skin in the game but to come up with complex and often non-applicable theories that fail in real world. In academics there is no difference between academics and real world. In real world there is.

You will find many fascinating topics and concepts in this book such as Lindy effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect) or ergodicity, etc.

The concept of the book and its essays are beautifully summarized by authors own words. No muscle without strength, no friendship without trust, no opinion without consequences, no change with aesthetics, no age without values, no life without effort, no water without thirst, no food without nourishment, no love without sacrifice, no power without fairness, no facts without rigor, no statistics without logic, no math without proof, no teaching without experience, no politeness without warmth, no values without embodiment, no degrees without erudition, no militarism without fortitude, no progress without civilization, no virtue without risk, no probability without ergodicity, no wealth without exposure, no complication without depth, no fluency without content, no decision without asymmetry, no science without skepticism, no religion without tolerance and most of all NOTHING WITHOUT SKIN IN THE GAME.

P.S: Feel free to leave comments.