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Skin in the Game is the fifth book in Taleb’s Incerto series. The main idea of the Incerto is that the world is fundamentally unpredictable, and Skin in the Game is about the ethics of living in that uncertain world.
Someone who has “skin in the game” has a vested interest in the outcome of an event—and, more importantly, has something to lose. At a rodeo, the rider on the bucking bronco has skin in the game, while the audience member eating popcorn in the bleachers does not. Essentially, Taleb equates skin in the game to risk. The more you have to lose, the more skin you have in the game.
Taleb argues that ****the foundation of ethics is that everyone involved has equal skin in the game. In other words, your actions that benefit you should benefit others, and, more importantly, your actions that harm others should harm you.
According to Taleb, our first impressions of how the world works are often not just wrong, but dangerously contradictory to reality. Institutions that ignore the need for skin in the game are doomed to fail, and they’ll likely cause widespread harm along the way.
In this guide, we’ll: