--- title: 10 Questions for Nassim Taleb | TIME description: The Black Swan author's latest, The Bed of Procrustes, is a book of aphorisms. Nassim Taleb will now take your questions. canonical: https://time.com/video/zFArI42Z/ og:title: 10 Questions for Nassim Taleb og:description: The Black Swan author's latest, The Bed of Procrustes, is a book of aphorisms. Nassim Taleb will now take your questions. og:url: https://time.com/video/zFArI42Z/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/zFArI42Z/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Nassim Taleb twitter:description: The Black Swan author's latest, The Bed of Procrustes, is a book of aphorisms. Nassim Taleb will now take your questions. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/zFArI42Z/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Nassim Taleb > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Nassim Taleb [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Nassim Taleb](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zFArI42Z.m3u8) (6:03)  _Published 2010-12-02. The Black Swan author's latest, The Bed of Procrustes, is a book of aphorisms. Nassim Taleb will now take your questions._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:07 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Questions for Darren Aronofsky](/video/AjoJEeRW/) ### 10 Questions for Darren Aronofsky [10 Questions for Terry McMillan](/video/1veMXoyB/) ### 10 Questions for Terry McMillan [10 Questions with Michael Pollan](/video/jsDlJE2h/) ### 10 Questions with Michael Pollan --- ## Transcript >> I'm Michael Elliot, the Deputy Managing Editor of TIME Magazine and right here to talk with Nassim Nicholas Taleb about his new book, The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim's previous book, The Black Swan was an international best- seller, which many people read as an explanation of what we want thinking about before the financial crisis broke into 2008 on academic, market trader, a mathematician and all around polymath. It's a delight to welcome Nassim Nicholas Taleb to TIME Magazine. >> Thank you. I'm very honor to be here. >> Toby Withby from Houston asks, you're a trader and a very successful bum. Do you think that sensationalized stock market programming by the likes of CNBC and others have affected investor behavior and market efficiency? >> I think so. I think the fact that you're exposed to market variations all the time burns you out, which-- I mean, this started happening in 2000 when we still have the web and people who, otherwise, would not have access to prices except if you have the morning paper will constantly expose to it throughout the day. I think it burnt out a lot of people who switch to money- market funds, where you just give your money to someone and get your monthly statement. >> Do you won this event, the financial crisis and your prediction is right, can you foresee any other crisis that will happen in the near future? >> Yes. Unfortunately, there's this debt crisis. I mean, of course, unless you strengthen, you modify that bridge. We have a fundamental problem, the core of capitalism that will blow it up and this is what I call the agency problem. This asymmetric payoff I have that, you know, a manager of the company gets bonuses but no minuses. So the stock market now down about, you know, in less than a year-- in a states between 20 and 50 percent in France. Okay, the stock market down so much that all the managers are rich because they have the upside in all of this asymmetric-- >> Upside [ unk ]. >> So that asymmetry plus that is gonna blow up the capital. It's not what it's meant to be. So unless we-- and it doesn't look like from what I see happening, this is going away, as a matter of fact, this getting worst. Banks are benefiting even more from that asymmetry. They're making record money and people are unemployed because of their mistakes. So those are making the money are not paying the price of their mistakes. >> Black Swan, Amanda [ unk ] extreme out [ unk ], is it possible to profit from these events? >> I mean, half of the Black Swan is about saying that they're positive in making the Black Swan and I kept talk about it an anti- fragile systems are systems that are benefit from Black Swans, evolution benefits from random events, otherwise, we wouldn't be here. >> Natural Systems are not just robust of Black Swan but they are like, what I call filo- stochastic. They love volatility. They love evolution cannot take place unless you have shocks that, you know, purge the system in a way. That's what people called creative destruction. But there are lots of things like that, even economic life. This Black Swan to remove, you know, certain like people who don't belong there. But unfortunately, the governments, they protect these people. >> Many people like Sam-- the specialization is the key to human advancement. Do you think that's true? >> That's not. >> Or is there's still a place in the world for the renaissance men? >> It is not true the specialization. Specialization, all the specializations is [ unk ] to fragile because the field, you know, may disappear. You see the success stories of those who over specialized and happened to be successful. Okay? Not the other ones. There's a huge cemetery of over specialized people who have disappeared, number one, to-- I don't know what he define, what he calls renaissance men. But knowledge has not improved massively. People don't realize that we still have, you have the impression from listening to things that you by the million papers and social science. Okay-- that we have a vast knowledge. We have not-- [ unk ] and you'll see that in a [ unk ] sciences and lot of fields, we have not invest that much. In a complex domain we have not advanced that much. So, being a generalist as, you know, people where 500 years ago is still feasible. >> Kenny Smith from Boston asks if there are any problems that you really ingested in right there? >> Well, I mean, my central problem now is figuring out anti- fragility, which is a number one-- there are two things to it. Number one, defining it, of course, it's something that benefits from [ unk ] Black Swan but another, another problem with [ unk ] central to me is why is it that we humans denigrate the systems [ unk ] themselves on their own. You see, because we act as if we were necessary. >> Yeah. >> For things to take place and that's a big problem. This has good people in medicine, you know, healing intervention when Mother Nature can do a better job. We always kinda think they were smarter than nature. We have that bias. So this is my problem I'm working on is how to mitigate that, how to replace the instinct to something that's not as harmful. >> Very good. Nassim, thank you for coming by. >> Great. Thanks. >> Great to see you again. >> Thank you. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions for Nassim Taleb","description":"The Black Swan author's latest, The Bed of Procrustes, is a book of aphorisms. Nassim Taleb will now take your questions.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/zFArI42Z/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2010-12-02T17:36:08.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zFArI42Z.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/zFArI42Z/","duration":"PT6M3S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/zFArI42Z/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```