The sucker problem is to think that those for whom you feel compassion would also feel compassion for those weaker and more afflicted than they are. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Keeping ones distance from an ignorant person is equivalent to keeping company with a wise man.

The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality — without exploiting them for fun and profit.

But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period.