Taleb loses me at the end (Nicomachean ethics? come on), but I love his "take risks, but don't take stupid risks" stance. A stance which I first encountered in How to Legally Own Another Person[1].

The key takeaway is twofold, in my opinion:

- People underestimate tail risk in their day-to-day: Bob smokes and drinks daily and eats red meat and doesn't exercise at all. These are "small" events independent of each other, but the aggregate will probably lead to ruin (probably a heart attack in his mid-50s).

- People overestimate tail risk (due to a lack of courage[2]): Jill says she's "risk averse" and that she won't start a business because it might ruin her -- although in the grand scheme of things, 6 months of your life and a $10,000 investment are not ruin-inducing.

[1] http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/employee.pdf

[2] Maybe dragging ethics into this wasn't such a bad move after all.