[pizza_boy]

It's not immediately obvious there's anything new or interesting in there: how is this heuristic different to a classic Hansonian bet [1]?

One potential advantage is that having "skin in the game" has a more positive connotation than betting on outcomes, to the general public at least. Regardless, Hanson at least deserves a mention.

From a stylistic point of view I'm not a big fan of the appeals to authority (e.g., "the ancients were fully aware" ) either.

From a startup perspective it's worth mentioning that mentorship or advice is also generally more confusing and less useful when the mentor lacks "skin in the game". Hence mentor "whiplash".

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/07/bets-argue.html

[tedsanders]

Good points. However, I don't think that "the ancients were fully aware" is an appeal to authority. I think the idea is ancient people tended to use things that were successful; therefore if the ancients used something, we should boost our confidence in it (relative to the baseline).

[pizza_boy]

You're partially correct. I'd say that we tend to adopt the successful cultural adaptations of our ancestors and discard the others.

In other words, when comparing an ancient society to one descended from it, I'd expect the "successful" adaptations of the ancestor culture to be disproportionately present in the descendant. The converse need not be true.

In Taleb's example Taleb of the builder, those ancient heuristics became our tort law (and will be a part of our reputation networks in the future). He doesn't mention all the cultural adaptations we've since dropped...

So it's obvious at best, and an appeal to authority at worst.