Ethics: Taleb and Sandis (2013), Sandis and Taleb (2015). See also Nagel (1970), Ross (1939); for the philosophy of action, Sandis (2010, 2012). Political ethics: Thompson (1983). Uncertainty and ethics: Altham (1984), Williams (1993), Zimmerman (2008). General: Blackburn (2001), Broad (1930). Climbing the mountain on different sides: Parfit (2011). Ethics and knowledge: Pritchard (2002), Rescher (2009).

While I lean towards virtue ethics, virtue for its own sake, for existential reasons, my co-author Constantine Sandis and I found, thanks to On What Matters by Derek Parfit (2011), who considers them all to be climbing different sides of the same mountain, that skin in the game falls at the convergence point of three main ethical systems: Kantian imperatives, consequentialism, and classical virtue.

Principal-agent and moral hazard in economics: Ross (1973), Pratt et al. (1985), Stiglitz (1988), Tirole (1988), Hölmstrom (1979), Grossman and Hart (1983)

Islamic decision making under uncertainty: Unpublished manuscript by Farid Karkabi, Karkabi (2017), Wardé (2010). Al ġurm fil jurm is the main concept.

Eye for Eye not literal: The discussion in Aramaic that when a small man harms a big man, there is no equivalence, is mistranslated. Gadol refers to “hero” rather than “big” and Qatan to “puny” rather than small.

Rationality: Binmore (2008), and private communication with K. Binmore and G. Gigerenzer at the latter’s Bielefeld festschrift in 2017.

Christians and pagans: Wilkens (2003), Fox (2006), among many. See Read and Taleb (2014).

Julian: Ammianus Marcellinus, History, vols. I and II, Loeb Classics, Harvard University Press. See also Downey (1939, 1959).

Ostrom: Ostrom (1986, 2015). Also, econtalk discussion with Peter Boetke with Russell Roberts, econtalk.org/​archives/​2009/​11/​boettke_on_elin.html.

Asymmetry and Scalability: Antifragile.

Selfish Gene: Wilson and Wilson (2007), Nowak et al. (2010). Pinker statement about the debate between Nowak, Wilson et al., and others who support the “selfish gene” approach, missing scalability among other things: edge.org/​conversation/​steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection. Bar-Yam and Sayama (2006).

Fences make good neighbors: Rutherford et al. (2014).

Sacrifice: Halbertal (1980)

Dynamic inequality: Lamont (2009), Rank and Hirshl (2014, 1015). Also Mark Rank, “From Rags to Riches to Rags,” The New York Times, April 18, 2014.

Ergodicity and gambles: Peters and Gell-Mann (2016), Peters (2011).

Inequality: Picketty (2015). Dispossession already in Piketty (1995).

Miscomputation of inequality: Taleb and Douady (2015), Fontanari et al. (2017).

Taxation for equality incompatible with fat tails: Such a tax, meaning to punish the wealth generator, is popular but absurd and certainly suicidal: since the payoff is severely clipped on the upside, it would be a lunacy to be a risk taker with small probability bets, with wins of 20 (after tax) rather than 100, then disburse all savings progressively in wealth tax. The optimal strategy then would be to go become an academic or a French-style civil servant, the anti-wealth generators. To see the cross-sectional problem temporally: Compare someone with lumpy payoffs, say an entrepreneur who makes $4.5 million every twenty years, to an economics professor who earns the same total over the period ($225K in taxpayer-funded income). The entrepreneur over the very same income ends up paying 75 percent in taxes, plus wealth tax on the rest, while the rent-seeking tenured academic who doesn’t contribute to wealth formation pays say 30 percent.)

Kelly gambling: Thorp (2006), McLean et al. (2011).

Satisficing: It is erroneous to think that the axioms necessarily lead one to “maximize” income without any constraint (academic economists have used naive mathematics in their optimization programs and thinking). It is perfectly compatible to “satisfice” their wealth, that is, shoot for a satisfactory income, plus maximize their fitness to the task, or the emotional pride they may have in seeing the fruits of their labor. Or not explicitly “maximize” anything, just do things because that is what makes us human.

Violence: Pinker (2011), Cirillo and Taleb (2016, 2018).

Renormalization: Galam (2008, 2012). Renormalization group in Binney et al. (1992).

Thick Blood: Margalit (2002).

Bounded Rationality: Gigerenzer and Brighton (2009), Gigerenzer (2010).

Lindy Effect: Eliazar (2017), Mandelbrot (1982, 1997); also Antifragile.

Periander of Corinth: in Early Greek Philosophy: Beginning and Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 1.

Genes and Minority Rule: Lazaridis (2017), Zalloua, private discussions. Languages move much faster than genes. Northern Europeans are surprised to hear that (1) ancient and modern Greeks can be actually the same people, (2) “Semitic people” such as the Phoenicians are closer genetically to the “Indo-European” Ancient than to “Semites,” though linguistically far apart.