Antifragile

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Highlights

• In this book, Taleb discusses strategies and principles that will allow us to be helped by unforeseen events rather than harmed by them.
• The models and theories we use to try to predict the future invariably fall apart as unforeseen events prove them wrong and, in turn, destroy the plans we made based on those models. Clearly, systems based on such flawed models are bound to be fragile—easily broken.
• The solution to this problem is antifragility. Instead of a never-ending search for more accurate models and better predictions, all we need to do is make sure that we’re in a position to benefit from uncertainty and volatility instead of being harmed by it.
• By avoiding fragility and embracing antifragility wherever possible, we can set ourselves up to thrive in an uncertain world.
• To counter success, you need a high offsetting dose of robustness, even high doses of antifragility. You want to be Phoenix, or possibly Hydra. Otherwise the sword of Damocles will get you.
• Hormesis, a word coined by pharmacologists, is when a small dose of a harmful substance is actually beneficial for the organism, acting as medicine.
• In other words, hormesis is the norm, and its absence is what hurts us.
• The larger point is that we can now see that depriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful.
• How do you innovate? First, try to get in trouble. I mean serious, but not terminal, trouble.
• The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates!
• The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.