Nassim Taleb on Living a Good Life in an Age of Volatility

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, Odd Lots listeners. You are listening to another episode that was recorded live in New York City at our event on June 26th. This time, it's with the one and only Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished scientist and advisor at Universa Investments.

Tracy Alloway (0:34)

Yep, we talked to him about how to live a good life in a time of immense volatility. Take a listen. Nassim, what's your definition of a good life? What should we be aiming for?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (0:47)

I mean, a lot of people think that we're programmed to be happy and stuff like that. In fact, we're programmed to feel useful. That's a good life. I mean, you don't have to be a martyr to feel useful. As a matter of fact, martyrs go too far, and if you look at their deaths, typically in history, you realize they could have waited a decade and the problem was to solve the self by self, right? So think of all the wars and, hey, the Vietnam War took care of the self or the rest. So whatever.

So let's forget about martyrdom, except of course in narrow cases where you save someone. So the idea is to be useful to others. And then the idea is to share your mistakes as you grow in age, to share your mistakes with society, so they can build on it. That's my idea of a good life. For a lot of people, good life is hedonic in the sense that they have a chef flown in from Europe to eat some complicated food that our friend here would not approve, really, you know, non-steaks, complicated things with long names. And so that's a hedonic approach to things. Mine is you feel useful. So whether you have a family and you're providing for them, or for a lot of people who don't have a family yet or may not have a family, because in the past, most people didn't have a family. A lot of people were orphans. A lot of people had children who didn't survive. So the idea is to be useful to the community in general.

Joe Weisenthal (2:26)

So we talked about this in the market context at the very beginning. But does, you know, I feel this pull to basically always look at my phone to monitor the latest headlines. Sometimes I don't think like I'm the best parent because I'm looking at my phone when I should be with my family, as you mentioned. How do we be useful in a time when we're just being bombarded with events beyond our control?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2:54)

Okay, yeah, but we're better off than we were 40 years, 50 years ago before many were born, maybe perhaps even you. Yeah. So you don't realize that we spent about a century in front of a TV set or reading papers where you're on a receiving end, but not providing anything in return. So it was a centralized information era that started with modernity. And you realize that you should see the families eating the dinner in front of the TV set. Basically, you're receiving information, whereas organically, in the past, the way we dealt with information was by trading it. It's like Twitter.

You give information, you receive information. So you go to the barber, someone gives you information, and then you go to buy fish, you give the fishmonger information, and then rumors start going. And now we're close to that period, because you're not just receiving stuff. You're also tweeting. You know, so although your spouse, I'm sure, tells you not to tweet from home.

Joe Weisenthal (4:03)

That's correct.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (4:03)

Yeah, that's correct.

Tracy Alloway (4:05)

It is true, when we're trying to get Joe's attention, we send a DM, because he doesn't respond to anything else.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (4:10)

So I'm sure he's tweeting, so you're feeling, you're not just receiving noise, but you create noise.

Joe Weisenthal (4:14)

So I'm contributing. I'm being useful by contributing to the noise. Thank you. Very validating.

Tracy Alloway (4:19)

Wait, but do you personally enjoy being on Twitter? Because I read some of your tweets, and you know, sometimes you seem a little angry.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (4:26)

No, so if I were tweeting now in front of all of you, the tweet would look angry, but my face... I'm often giggling when I'm tweeting, all right? I'm often giggling. So the idea is to separate your public persona from your private life.

Joe Weisenthal (4:49)

By the way, before we forget, before you leave tonight, someone dn'd me and said, can you please ask Nassim to unblock me on Twitter?