Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

We are drowning in information.

Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know, in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time.

The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them.

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

I don't think we should have less information in the world. The information age has yielded great advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation and many other fields. But the problem is twofold. One, we are assaulted with more information than any one of us can handle. Two, beyond the overload, too much information often leads to bad decisions.

Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.

If 300 million people were to offer up the details of their private lives, you would need to hire another 300 million people just to keep up.

Here's the thing: If you're monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. How are you going to process that amount of information?

The Internet is, among other things, a massive, chaotic marketplace. Too much information, it turns out, is a lot like no information.

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.

Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

[…] a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

There's a mountain of information about us. I mean there's so much. Anyway, I'm not an intelligence person. But I just look at it and it's a mountain of data.

People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.

When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that's emerging. I think as long as you keep your mind in the palce where you're actively looking for patterns, you may not be safe, but you're going to feel safe, I think.

Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.

If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics. It does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, as long as there is enough of them.

We live in a time of excess - excess population, excess information.

The computer, being a mechanical moron, can handle only quantifiable data.

How it is we have so much information, but know so little?

Big data is indeed a buzzword but it is one that is frankly under-hyped.

The point is there is more information now then you can pass along comfortably in an oral tradition, say a strictly speaking culture. That is a problem.

It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.

Now that knowledge is taking the place of capital as the driving force in organizations worldwide, it is all too easy to confuse data with knowledge and information technology with information.