How to Improve Your BS Detection Skills

A Pain Avoidance Shortcut

Never trust anyone without skin in the game.

Conversely, trust the Doers and Risk Takers. They have a penalty for being wrong.

That is the basic thesis of the latest book by Nicholas Taleb. I recently finished reading “Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.” It was awesome.

If you want to seriously enhance your “BS Detection Skills,” read this book.

Taleb makes the case for why we should be aggressively skeptical of people who give advice with nothing to lose when they are wrong. The most blatant examples of the “risk-nothings” include policy makers, bankers, economists, and academics.

Taleb wrote something that makes profound sense to me. “The best thing a Professor can teach you is how to be a Professor.” This statement makes the case for taking courses from adjunct professors, instead of tenured ones who have never “done it.”

Like every author, I don’t endorse everything Taleb says. But, he made me think on every page, and I loved his irreverence for politically correct thinking.

If you have not pulled yourself up, felt pain in life, and strived to overcome, you probably won’t like this book.