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Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

Mr.Marnier

New Member
I came across this book from Nassim Taleb on a favorite forum of mine.I find myself drawn to this irreverent gentlemen and his ideas - having now purchased 3 of his books and listened to several of his talks online.

Have you read it? if so...I'm interested to see what you took from it?

For those that are not acquainted with the book or Nassim, here's a very brief idea of what it's all about.

The central theme of Antifragile, is that the World did not have a complete term for something that is the opposite of fragile. If you ask someone who's not read this book what, in their opinion, is the opposite of fragile - you'll often get a response along the lines of: resiliant, robust, resistant etc...

But Nassim believes this is not accurate. Something fragile is harmed in a non-linear way - an analogy he used was that if you crash your car into a wall at 50mph, it is much more harmful that crashing your car into the same wall 50 times at 1 mph.

Therefore, something that is the opposite of fragile wouldn't simply "resist" disorder or pressure etc... it would actually GAIN in some way from the disorder / stressor.

For an example of an antifragile entity - consider a terrorist organization, often when a leader is killed (the disorder / stressor to that organization) more than one leader steps in to fill their place, and more than likely several more recruits will join in response, hence the organization actually grew stronger from disorder. This is Antifragility.

Nassim writes in a captivating way, he is often extremely irreverent and loves to hurl written invective at top name "fragilistas" - people that he feels use their power to actually make systems like the economy and government more fragile to the ineveitable stressors that exist in life.

The book is pretty disjointed if you like traditional formats - it's like you are inside Talebs mind, as he wanders from dense mathematics to subjects that stoke his erudition like roman philosophy, history and ancient traditions (heuristics).

Very interesting stuff to me, but I know Nassim is very much a "love or hate" type of guy so I'm sure there are some interesting opinions from others!
 
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