Summary:
The basic premise of the book, is that one should not believe opinions or forecasts of others, unless they have some “skin in the game.” Results are all that count–opinions and talk are worthless. It is so easy for people to spout utter nonsense, so unless they could potentially suffer consequences of being wrong, you should ignore them. This goes especially for intellectuals in academia.
According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, our society has cultivated a privileged class of Intellectuals Yet Idiots (IYIs). These people monopolize positions of authority and routinely take decisions to intervene in that complex world, without however doing the effort to think through the cascading impacts of these decisions and being conveniently isolated from any tangible repercussions on themselves. In other words, these people have nothing at stake. They have no skin the game. As a result our systems ‘rot’, i.e. they become ever more fragile. Taleb has explained fragility and antifragility in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.
Keep an eye out for who is saying and doing things, and how much stake they personally have in whether they are correct. If the answer is zero, or even worse, they are betting against themselves, then they are not to be taken seriously.
Skin in the Game is part of the Incerto Collection, which includes Taleb’s other books, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and The Bed of Procrustes.