Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

As usual with the author, there's intellectual gold in them thar hills, but it requires traversing a fair bit of terrain characterized by invective. Some of it is surely warranted, some assuredly not, but I don't know how to tell the difference.

Never have I read a book I disliked so much despite agreeing with the underlying premise. After 90 pages I could endure it no longer. The problem is that the author tries too hard to be funny, which ok some humor is an acquired taste, but he rags on all sorts of professions (doctors, accountants, professors, etc) for them being intrinsically unethical - a hard stretch. Furthermore, he uses evidence that is wrong. The last straw was “…Fukushima nuclear reactor, which experienced a catastrophic failure in 2011 when a tsunami struck. It had been built to withstand the worst past historical earthquake, with the builders not imagining much worse…” which is patently false (see below). Ultimately the author is to focused on everyone else being wrong rather than showing what’s right and it got too distracting to finish.

Addendum: The reactor did not account for the rest of Japan being out of power for so long and should have been caught, yes, but the design spec was to survive a 8.25 magnitude earthquake, which was a very statistically rare event and within worldwide standards. Not to mention it survived the 9 magnitude earthquake just fine (it was the tsunami that was the problem).

I love his ideas but he plays too much the victim of what he doesn't agree with. And boy is he verbose.

Key takeaways:

I didn't finish this book. It was strange. I didn't know what to do with a lot of his ideas, but there were a few pieces of gold that I took away. I didn't finish this book because the last 25% felt like he wrote this book just so he would have a platform to spread his rules for living. I disagreed with many of them, which I'm fine with, but the tone he used felt very abrasive–maybe I was in a bad mood while reading this book–but the last part was hard to get through, and eventually I stopped trying.

- When preparing for a disaster, we often use models based on the last disaster. The problem is, the last disaster was a surprise when it happened. The same will be true of the next one.
- When one person stands and rails against everyone and everything, I try to be cautious. They probably have some good in their views, but the odds that they have found the only way and everyone else is dead wrong seems unlikely. Presenting your ideas that way certainly makes it hard to take them seriously.
- Two brothers: One is a business man with a 9-5 job, the other is a cab driver. In a 9-5 job, your pay cheque is the same every week, you know how many hours you will work. As a cab driver, your pay will be different every week, and you could work 10 hours or 80. Which one is more fragile? The cab driver. They will learn to live with the instability and go for a stretch with reduced pay. They can sense changes and trends based on how many fares they have. The 9-5 may feel more stable, but if something goes wrong, you go from a steady job to nothing.
- A small forest fire burns up the deadwood. If you never allow small forest fires, eventually there will be a big one, with lots of deadfall to burn. It will likely be more catastrophic. In ancient civilizations, there was regularly small battles between neighboring cities and regions. Now, we don't experience those small battles, but the pressure builds until there is a large scale conflict, with more devastating results–like the world wars. Similarly, when we try to prevent the business cycle, fewer businesses go bust, times are good, until they aren't. Propping up the system without allowing deadfall to burn off leads to big market crashes and large scale recessions. Is it real stability or manufactured?
- We tend to over intervene when we shouldn't, and under intervene when we should intervene.
- Access to too much information and data makes it difficult to discern ‘noise' from ‘signal'.
- It's all about options. Most intelligent people are not necessarily making better decisions, they just have put themselves into a situation where they have more options to choose from.
- Order matters. Trying to earn 20% return if there is a chance you could return -100%, you're doing it wrong. Rather, focus on eliminating the risk of a black swan, then focus on earning returns. We often think success is the main concern of a business, with risk management being an afterthought. Success doesn't mean anything if you go bust. Make it so you can't go bust, then work on earning your returns.
- Wisdom when making decisions is more important that knowledge.
- I really enjoyed the section addressing ‘lecturing birds how to fly'. Birds knew how to fly, but a professor could go out and lecture them on how to fly. The professor is writing books, the bird is not. After a generation, people might be convinced birds know how to fly because we tell them how. This example is absurd, of course, but Mr. Taleb makes the case that this happens in business schools and other higher education. Instead, he proposes that many of the solutions we have today were discovered because some business person had a problem and tinkered with some solutions. When it worked, scholars started to teach lessons about it, and no one remembers that the problem wasn't solved by academics. ‘Science doesn't lead to inventions, tinkering does.'
- Barbell balance: If you keep 90% of your portfolio in cash and 10% in investments with a huge upside, the most you can lose is 90%. The amount you can gain is nearly limitless. If, instead, you invest 100% of your portfolio in moderate risk investments, your whole portfolio is at risk for limited upside. You might nicely make 7% per year, but when the black swan hits, all bets are off. In the reverse situation, you might lose every year, but when the black swan occurs–and it will–you have huge gains.
- Beware of over optimizing. If you optimize an airport so it functions smoothly everyday under normal load with no redundancy or waste, you will be in big trouble when under a significant loan. No one cares if there plane is 20 minutes early, but they will certainly care if their flight is 2 hours delayed.
- Bet on the jockey, not the horse. In venture capital, investors usually chose to invest in a person, not a specific product. Why? A person can change course. Their objectives change. When they are working on an invention, they might uncover something completely different. Tiffany's started as a stationary store. Dupont started as an explosives company. Raytheon started as a refrigerator maker. Nokia began as a paper mill, then moved into rubber shoes. Avon started in door-to-door book sales.

Tempted to give this a two, but there were some interesting stories so I will rank it a 3. I was tasked with reading this for work, and had never read any of the authors previous works.

There is language used in this book that makes me take the author's points less seriously, as it feels like name calling: he frequently uses the word “sissies” and has made up his own: “fragilista.” It's tiresome.

The perspective is that the opposite of fragility isn't resilience, it is getting stronger through damage (like how you build muscle). The rest of the 400+ pages are just specific micro-examples of how that plays out in life.

Could have been shorter, but I imagine for some the tons of examples are helpful? Felt like Malcolm Gladwell but much more disjointed.

before i die.... i have to tell you something....
the lindy effect is-

This is one of those books that is great because it introduces a new way of talking about what has always existed. You will either agree with the claims and conclusions and find yourself able to put words to things you likely already believed or, if you disagree, clarify your own perspective by creating a defense against a new and intriguing attack.

I think he over-Taleb'd this time.

Woah, good way to step back and look at the world from a “things will change & your ability to take the hit and get stronger” perspective.

Why did I pick this book?
I saw this book recommended in numerous lists, but decided to actually read it when it was highly recommended during a webinar on Mental Models to use during the Covid-crisis. We life in volatile and an uncertain time, and being antifragile means you can handle and even thrive in such an environment.

About the book
Nassim Taleb argues why we need to have an (working) understanding of what it means to be antifragile. How to identify things which are fragile and how to become antifragile; to be able to thrive in an ever changing and uncertain environment.
Taleb does this in a very unique way, which to me feels a bit like sitting down at a diner room table and having Taleb explain his view on antifragility. Meaning that, although there are chapters (and even books) within the book, they are not clearly separating different arguments. He also does it in a style of writing which is really his own. Do not expect to read a ‘clean', “scientifically” argued book with a clear definition of antifragility. Also, be ready to have Taleb's opinions heard (where bankers, people-in-suits and bureaucrats are not highly regarded).

My recommendation
Start with a short summary of the key take-aways from this book, as I feel Taleb gives too many personal anecdotes/arguments to get a clean take-away of the concept of Antifragility. If you enjoy the summary, and need more information around the topic this book is a very good read and contains quite a few clear and entertaining examples to argue his point of view.

The star rating I gave is misleading. Do I want everyone to read this book? ABSOLUTELY. Do I agree with the author? Eh, somewhat. He makes several excellent points and the core of the book is pure gold. But he also thinks all medicine is useless, mental diseases are made up, and many other bizarre claims. Also it's funny how he accuses researchers cherry-picking cases, to make examples, while he's doing the exact same thing. But overall, the book is truly worth a read. Especially at times like now (I'm writing this amidst COVID-19 pandemic) we see how fragile our modern world really is and how often we would benefit by making things a bit less optimized, and a bit more redundant, making them robust if not antifragile.

Complex systems strive on the edge of chaos. The more randomness you're exposed to, the stronger you get. Systems (people, ideas, institutions, states..) that become too comfortable in their patterns, that have too many safety nets to ever learn from failures, that are too over-optimized and lack redundancies, will fail in the event of unexpected emergencies. It's the cruel lesson of survival of the fittest, of nature always being one strike ahead of us.

That's what I'd see at the basis of this book. Taleb tells it with his arrogance, and probably too many words and sample applications. What sticks with me is the question, if we'll be able to get ahead of nature at some point.

I got bored as I started the second book, so I really just skimmed the last four... However! Although I find Taleb's style to meander, I find his ideas quite striking. I'm definitely a big fan of capital Antifragility.

“I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.”

It's been quite a long time since a book changed or challenged so much of the things I believed in, and this is exactly what Antifragile has done on an unbelievable amount of levels (politics, health, work, ethics, ...). With the aforementioned quote that immediately hooked me, this book makes you think on a lot of levels about how you see the world. All along, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writing is exquisite, it's really rare for such profound subjects to be treated in such a blunt, honest and straight-to-the-point way (even with some snarky comments that made me laugh out loud while reading). The book attacks a lot of things that build our society with a wonderful sense of wisdom and clarity. Armed with a bullshit detector, Nassim N. Taleb attacks everything : the way we envision society, technology, youth, medicine, drugs, business, finances, ... It's really hard to express how much this book encompass, but what is sure is that reading it will change your mind forever.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Zeno postulated that happiness is not a proper goal for humans - when subjected to happiness, man does not strive for prosperity - he becomes complacent. Nassim Taleb takes this idea further with the birth of the term ‘Antifragile' - a middle ground between fragile and rigid. Fragile people break under pressure, rigid people don't learn from mistakes, but antifragile people benefit from stress by learning from the experience. Nassim advocates for constant subjection of stress to political, economical, and social systems in order to make the antifragile. A sort of balance providing adequate problems to challenge life and enough enthusiasm to tackle them.

It affirms the Darwinian mantra “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

This one had interesting points, but as someone who focuses around systems and order, it was hard for me to imagine structuring systems in this way. The examples were interesting – things like the human body and vaccines as an example of a system that grows stronger after trauma.

This one had interesting points, but as someone who focuses around systems and order, it was hard for me to imagine structuring systems in this way. The examples were interesting – things like the human body and vaccines as an example of a system that grows stronger after trauma.

There are some good points made in the book, but overall I cannot recommend. The author spends entirely too many pages on things he doesn't like (which is just about everything). A short list: doctors, businessmen, politicians, economists, psychologists, scientists, lawyers, ebooks, anything invented since the dark ages, and so on. He very much comes across as both a Luddite and a curmudgeon.

To summarize the book: The author has found that there is no word for the opposite of ‘fragile', so he cleverly coins the word ‘anti-fragile'. He then mocks everyone past and present who has not thought of this themselves or or applied to their lives and work. Einstein.. what an idiot- he didn't even know what anti-fragile was! He is quick to label others as charlatans, hacks,etc. He does not live up to his own impossible standards.

Most of his argument is semantics. A line repeated throughout the book: ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. I do not believe he was successful in describing what anti-fragile was. No attempt is made to apply his theory to current events or the future, only to the all to convenient past.

He recalls with glee telling a student who asks what books he should be reading (none written in the last 100 years certainly!). I will end this by saying that while i don't believe his premise that there are no modern worthy books, his is one you can afford to skip.

There are some good points made in the book, but overall I cannot recommend. The author spends entirely too many pages on things he doesn't like (which is just about everything). A short list: doctors, businessmen, politicians, economists, psychologists, scientists, lawyers, ebooks, anything invented since the dark ages, and so on. He very much comes across as both a Luddite and a curmudgeon.

To summarize the book: The author has found that there is no word for the opposite of ‘fragile', so he cleverly coins the word ‘anti-fragile'. He then mocks everyone past and present who has not thought of this themselves or or applied to their lives and work. Einstein.. what an idiot- he didn't even know what anti-fragile was! He is quick to label others as charlatans, hacks,etc. He does not live up to his own impossible standards.

Most of his argument is semantics. A line repeated throughout the book: ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. I do not believe he was successful in describing what anti-fragile was. No attempt is made to apply his theory to current events or the future, only to the all to convenient past.

He recalls with glee telling a student who asks what books he should be reading (none written in the last 100 years certainly!). I will end this by saying that while i don't believe his premise that there are no modern worthy books, his is one you can afford to skip.

I've been reading this book, Antifragile, for almost four weeks. I call it reading. I've turned all the pages. I've read all the words. That's reading, right?

Or is it?

I started off pretty well, somehow managing to get my brain around the whole idea of antifragile, a word the author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, admits he made up. There is no real word in English that properly names this idea. Everyone understands the idea of fragile, something that is destroyed when stressed. But the opposite of fragile is more than just something that survives difficulties. Antifragility, Taleb tells us, is the idea of a phenomenon that goes beyond mere resilience; antifragility is the idea of something that actually improves with difficulties and uncertainty.

Taleb gives us lots of great examples of things that are antifragile: “...evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance...even our own existence as a species on this planet.”

I'm high-five-ing him, right and left...love this idea of antifragile, Taleb.

That was the Prologue, however. Round about the second or third page of Chapter 1, I find that I'm reading along, with no idea what Mr. Taleb is explaining. He tries, he really does, and now and then I read a paragraph and think I'm back on the highway. The Soviet-Harvard Department of Ornithology, for example. (How well do I know that department, the people who lecture to birds about proper techniques for flying, observe and write reports about the birds' flying abilities, and then seek funding to ensure that the lectures will continue!) But, soon I'm back driving in the dark again.

I don't know if I really read this book. Can I add it to my 2013 Book Log? Does it count? Please don't ask me to summarize it or outline it or (heaven forbid!) don't test me on it.

But if I didn't really read it, why did I like it so much? And why can't I stop thinking about it?

Maybe what I did when I read Antifragile was antireading. Maybe antireading is the kind of reading where you turn the pages and read the words, but understand only a smidgen of what's there, and then you think about it for weeks, and come back to the book again and again, and maybe try to reread it, and it tweaks your map about this life, even through you really didn't understand much of what you read to begin with.

Maybe antireading is the best kind of reading of all.

I'll write a full review after I've had a little time to digest it, but this book was a wonderful way to start the year. Taleb's writing is so full of beginnings and iconoclastic ideas that it'll take some time to sort it out and follow the leads. It'll be fun give it a go though.