The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i.e., bell-curve)… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i.e., bell-curve), and almost computable.
p. 127Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient (...), and a random one (...). In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.
p. 142
History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.
p. 8
Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.
p. 15

