Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (Incerto, #4)
by Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
Published: November 27, 2012
Read: July 26, 2020
Review
So many dense, excellent, and unique ideas. While the book begins fairly slow, the valuable insight offered really picks up going beyond just defining antifragile. Unwritten rules of thought that are obvious when said aloud like observable effects are much more timeless than theories or expected value doesn't matter if you die(avoid catastrophe risk). The concept of antifragile is powerful and many other intellectuals have borrowed it from this book. Read the original. The author can be a little annoying at times and some sections best summarized as author didn't like X, but I always appreciate some convincing contrarian frankness. Key idea: Antifragile means to benefit from change, errors, and randomness like nature, muscles, and children. This is beyond robust, as removing randomness from antifragile things is actively harmful. The antidote to black swans(unpredictable extreme events) is to seek many antifragile, nonlinear options.
Notes
#Book by [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]] BOOK Prologue
Conquer unseen. Anti fragile benefit from shocks, beyond resilient. Evolution, culture, good recipes, cities loves errors and randomness. We are better at doing then thinking. Anti fragile vs fragile is spectrum. This is guide to nonpredictive decision making under uncertainty. Calculating risks and black swans is intractable. So instead of trying, in every area the focus should be on moving from fragile to anti fragile. Simple test of asymmetry: more upside than downside from random events is anti fragile, opposite is fragile. Health, education suppressing randomness actually makes anti fragile things worseee. Largest source of fragility is lack of skin in the game. Today new class of bankers and academics have no real downside and risk.
“At no point in history has so many none risk takers, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control” -don’t know its true
The antidote to the black swan
Black swan are large, unforeseen events that cause most of history. Nonlinear. Neomania is building black swan vulnerable systems. Odds of rare events are not computable. Robust is not robust enough. Mother Nature is not robust, continuously regenerating. Most of the things thriving are antifragile. Illusion of lecturing birds to fly, the world functions according to design. Engineers and tinkers create. Fragility and antifragility are current property of object, unlike risk.
Fragilista, mistakes unseen don’t exist, reasons if they exist are accessible rationalist. Financial uses risk modes. Medicine prescribe medicine with side effects to even children. The simpler the better, less unforeseen. How to live in a world we don’t understand. No skill to understand, master to write.
This Book
Fragile is left alone, no harm, volitality, uncertainty, and critically time. Antifragile is opposite. Everything nonlinear is either fragile or antifragile to certain randomness. 2 types of people who deal with randomness. Academics vs practitioners. Practitioners get the point of antifragile, cuz fuck awards. Happy disorder family: uncertainty, variability, incomplete/imperfect knowledge, chance, chaos, volatility, disorder, turmoil, unknowledge, entropy, time, randomness, error, dispersion of outcomes, unknown, stressor. Time is functionally similar to volitality, ie experience. All his books are really just this one idea. Black swan are the appendix. Need to take idea that black swans dominate society and history and We don’t know what’s going on. He is practitioner, skin in game. Experience is not observational study that has so much data you can craft a narrative. Only distilled ideas from reality plz. “If you see fraud and don’t say fraud, you are a fraud.”
defozzelizing things. Avoid careerism, debiasing of knowledge by turning it into a competitive sport. Money and transaction purify relationships, ideas and recognition warp them. Commerce is door to commerce.
Organization
One - evolution and organic as typical. Antifragile of collective and fragility individual
Two - starve political systems of instability. Harm of healer
Three - Seneca and fat tony
Four - asymmetry beyond world not design
Five - nonlinear. Philosopher stone and opposite
Six - wisdom of omission and subtraction
Seven - ethics of asymmetry, problem of no skin in the game
Triad of world
Fragile, robust, antifragile.
Sword, Phoenix, hydra
Love mistakes. Artisans more antifragile than small business. All relative and different qualities. Fighter breaks down emotional. Debt is always more fragile. Antifragile up to certain level. One can die from being immortal, robust is not always desirable.
Intro
Opposite of negative is positive not indifferent. Opposite of fragile is antifragile. Yet the idea doesn’t exist in languages or peoples mind. Even cultures with only 3 names of colors can identify similar colors. Similar we are cultural not intellectually blind. Mythrodization is taking small doses of a substance that makes one immune to larger quantities. Like poison or vaccines. A small amount of harmful substance can also serve as medicine. Intermittent fasting/constraining food made rats live longer. Dominant independent is domain dependent. We fail to recognize situations outside of situation where we learned about it.
Where we find overcompensation
Some get stronger through trauma. It builds character. Innovation comes from neccisith rather than innovation classes. Dulling of pilot relying on automation causing accidents. If you want something done fast give it to the busiest people. Better to be slightly less audible, work hard to listen. Focus of listening harder causes analytical mind to engage. Act of filtering out background noise can cause focus in a cafe for example. It is Redundancy from nature. 2 kidneys. Seems like a a waste of nothing unusual happens, but something unusual happens. Overcompensation is redundancy. Additional motivation from setback is redundancy. Investment than insurance. Bodies assess risk better. Risk managers look at worst historical for worst possible outcome, but not true. Nature prepares for more than the worst. Body overshoots. Single lift past former maximum twice. Spend rest of time relaxing. Is fitness being good for current environment or future possible environments?
Antifragile of love and riots
Antifragile passion. Trying to control thoughts. Information and gossip, banned books. Insist something is a secret and it’s more likely to spread. Ayn Rian have intense crucial which shows it is not boring. Energy given by detractors puts you on the map. Don’t be in a job which is reputation fragile. Those who dress firm and proper often reputationally fragile. He is for no government debt because if you have debt your reputation matters.
Me: bad relationships anti fragile
Those who we have benefited the most from aren’t those who tried to help us, but those who tried and failed to hurt us.
The cat and washer machine
Everything that has life is antifragile, but not the reverse. Aging most causes are from maladjustment mismatch between our design and environment. Much of aging from lack of stressors like hunter gathers don’t have blood pressure problems until the end. Complicated is machine, but not complex because you push button and does X. Complex is interconnected system of interacting parts. Information about the environment to this parts are through stressors and hormones. Callouses. For child, pain is indicator. Bone loss causes aging and aging also causes bone loss, can’t differentiate between the thing. Antifragile activities don’t help pharma bottom line. Huge stressor like snake you overcome then conquering and relaxing is way better than minor long term modern stressors like boss or traffic or procrastination. Organic ages with disuse, overcompensates, interdependent, need recovery. Mechanical opposite. Language learned by communicate effort, not textbook. Touristfication treats human as washing machine with detailed, systems removal of uncertainty and randomness for name of comfort. We like amount of randomness. Nothing more delicious than water after thirst, most joyous item to get us lost laptop.
What kills me makes others stronger
Fragility of individual startup makes capitalism antifragile. Applies to evolution. Organism die and better survive making it antifragile. Diversity of organisms better than diversity within immortal organism. Not government bailing or failed institutions. Up to a point. Antibiotic resistance. Antifragile of species from fragility of organism. Notice layering, antifragile could be in service of higher power. Like cells die so your body can be improved. Titanic prvented large catropshtre. Mistakes if you learn are anticorrelated. Like plane crashes with testing learned vs banks which make the next crash more likely. Sometimes you know character after you harm them with something your fault. Someone given chance to violate moral codes. Loser makes mistake and think themselves the victim, no introspective. Someone who makes mistakes better than someone who never made any. Nature try’s to kill the individual entrpreneur, can’t please them all. This is selection. What did not kill me, did not make me stronger, but spared me and killed others, passed exit exam. Gulag killed weakest so sense that it made people strong. Group could be stronger after stress but not individual. As humanist, he is against this system. Entrepreneur that fails is proving what doesn’t work while the incentives and respect go to others. No such thing as failed entrepreneur or scientist. His dream is National entrepreneur day source of nations antifragile.
Book 2: modernity and denial of antifragile
How we are being harmful by denying stressors.
Banker vs taxi driver. Taxi driver has irregular fares, but an actually more stable job. One call ends banker salary. The way to eliminate randomness is not to eliminate randomness. Avoidance of small mistakes, make big mistakes more likely. Switzerland so robust without large government, bottoms up. Collection of municipalities in small units they have inefficiency, don’t scale about number of people. On local scale, care about people at state level about people. Side may matter more than system. Powerful national encourages lobbyists because of payoffs. Medicrostan M fluctuates, extremistan E few extreme variations. Randomness concentrates in E. Anything locked into planning tend to fail. Turkey is fed everyday very high confidence butcher loves turkeys until black swan of thanksgiving. Lebanon vs Syria had freedom/war vs strong central government while Lebanon had more civil wars and freedom. Lebanon has done better in the long term despite preferring war to prison. In ancient times, modern state was 5% of economy more 10x that in modern Europe. Mediocrity can’t handle more than one enemy, so alliance. E had huge wars. Distributed randomness. We think we are safer because of nuclear bombs exploding less often, but we are actually less safe than ever.
Chapter 6 systems that like randomness
Origin of financial crisis book days, eliminating speculators and variance makes huge jumps much more likely. People freak out at slightest variation. Firms become week with long periods of stability. Donkey will die is equally between food and water, a random nudge will save it. Weak signals can be heard better by adding background noise. Heating and cooling crystal makes it more stable by causing random movements of Aaron’s. Randomness works good in search, random drilling. Anneling. Ancients choose leaders randomly. Fate of Virgil would open Virgil and use the line to interpret decision. Seeking short term stability is staple of government and foreign policy, preventing revolt in Saudi Arabia, bailouts. Modernity is humans large scale dominating of world and extraction of humans from randomness. Idea that society is understandable with bell curve and thus should be designed. Separation of work and leisure though would be identical to someone from a better era. Concentration of human error. Religious to whatever can masquerade as science
Chp7 naive interaction
Urge to help. lacteogenic cost. Every unnecessary medical prodecure lowers life expectancy. Early medicine made you less likely to live, blood letting. Medical error kills more than any cancer and car accidents. Death is easier to see than giving kid medicine long term effects for adhd. Principal agent problem. Assigns youuu to do something, like a stock broker. Opposite is helping while trying to harm. Hackers make something stronger. Theory are fragile and dangerous, phenomology is observation of empirical regulatory and are robust and usable. R Russian and America convened on physics But has different social science ideas. Central banks are stupid for trying to get rid of business cycles. Weed out bad firms early. Find an editor and no matter how many editors you hone it to they will suggest edits at the same pace. Against not intervention but naive intervention. His book about how pros underestimate randomness, it was reported on as everything is randomness. Should intervene to reduce size, concentration, and speed. Speed on highway, hidden fragility. Attention is weakened during external regulators. Removing signs in German make people pay more attention and made it more safe. Democratic is intervention and trusting white republican love the opposite and encourage debt. Much easier to drop what you did not what you did not do. True hero is one who stops calamity from happening in black swan world. Romans’ praised anti intervention. Provocation lets things Play out before irreversible action. Procrastinating going to doctor can be helpful. Some thing it is disease. Some call it status quo bias. Write when you want to, environment that forces you to is irrational. Naturalistic fallacy is real, but nature has lasted forever, opposite fallacy is worse. Should only react to real info, signal not noise. Noise is random useless information. If you want to make someone die, get them a personal doctor. They need to prove their cost by doing something. Data is toxic in large quantity. More noise likely. Yearly stick review is like 1 to 1 signals to noise. Daily news is 99 to 1. Social to noise. Newspapers write the same amount every day. Media would send the troops after the battle and induce illusion of understanding. More fragile world while we think it’s more understandable. The more data you have the more confused you are. Famine often because of central planning. The state can help when incompetent. Us burns 12 calories for every 1 calorie of nutrition, Soviet Union was 1 to 1 and could handle their collapse of institutions. France seems great despite current central planning, but in 1863 has 1 in 5 speak French, so weak aristocracy . Only starting completed centralization in 1970s. Catalyst as Cause Confusion. Failure not blamed on intervention and bad system but lack of forecasting. Confuses catalyst for cause. Arab Spring Obama blames his intelligence community for not seeing it. But this is unpredictable, politics is not black jack.
Chp 8 prediction as child of modernity
Track record of predicting its close to 0. Wants world where Predictions should not harm you, robust. Forecasts are Lactrogenic. Giving people random forecast increases their risk taking. 1) antifragile is about minimizing harm and maximizing gain from forecasting error 2) make errors and things more robust 3) time, blame economic collapse on fragile not lack of prediction. Nuclear reactor can be making reactors small and underground enoughThat failure didn’t matter. Buffet invests in businesses so wonderful that an idiot can run them because eventually someone will. Black swan is nonmeasurable and non predictable and that will not change. Separate the consequential black swans, from the inconsequential rare events. More people using Chris theory from black swan lol
Book 3 non predictive view of the world
Curiously his antifragile and fueled by more books. Nero tried to not touristify his visit by inserting randomness. Fat Tony believes nerds and bankers are suckers and leads life of leisure. To Nero, a system based on false understanding of probability is fragile. People are unfair about how they give recognition and status, so don’t play. Erudition. Man honorable in personal risk he takes for his opinions. Nero systemically made donations not to charitable organization unless no one earned a salary. Can’t predict in general, but can predict predictioners take more risk.
Chp 10 Seneca Upside and Downside
Stoic. Philosopher was wealthiest in Roman Empire, practical guide. To become philosopher king, better to start as king than philosophy. Stoicism conventionally about indifference to fate, degrading earthly things. Look down on luxury, loss says lost nothing. Stoicism is Bushisms with attitude, says Duck you to fate. Antifragile man, Seneca if you read the text about antifragility. Want upside of fate, and Antifragile to robust loss. Rich person can be trapped by sense of loss, possessions make us worry about downside. Men feel good less intensely than bad. Fragile asymmetry is when you would feel worse losing a dollar than gaining one. Instead mentally not care about is to change equation. Domination of emotion, not elimination. Modern stoic “transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking”. Wait at least a day before beating someone. So we have robustness, but how antifragile. Seneca said “ wealth is a slave to the wise man and master to the fool”. Seneca kept his wealth, not a poor man hating on wealth. Wealth take upside and not downside, antifragile.
How does asymmetry of more to lose than gain fragile? Than volitality tends to bring harm. If you had more upside than downside, volitality brings benefit. Like a package that is fragile vas antifragile.
Chapter 12 barbell strat
First step to antifragile, is decreasing downside rather than increasing upside. Path dependency, fragile breaks and don’t become repaired. Easy to identify fragility, need to survive. Going 200 mph effective speed is near 0(cuz you crash). Efficiency becomes meaningless on its own. Higher ROI doesn’t matter if the risk of losing it all is high. Barball avoid the middle like moody people and have extreme risk aversion at one end and open to many small risks loving. Medium risk can be subject to huge miscalculation error. Ie keep 90% in cash and 10% in risky exposes you to massive upside. Maximum loss 90%. Dual strategy that creates asymmetry without hazard of middle.Some monogamous animals including humans marry accountant and chest with the rockstar. Getting benefits of both. Females want economic stability and good genes. Ignore small danger and only protect from consequential harm. People tend to avoid small losses, but not large black swan risks. Many girls where middle is wiser than bimodal. Writers often take stable government job then write. Kafka was insurance agent. Better than having to censor yourself by becoming part of media our abs academic or something. Author likes intense hours worked than rest of time dorky doing Nothing not years of low intensity Japanese style work. Remove risk of ruin. No smoking, motorcycles, sugar, mafia, small plane. Do all other risks. England has artisocracy and adventurers. One max rep exercise. Do crazy things and break furtinue and stay rational elsewhere. Y’all to undergraduates and cab drivers or the highest in their field. Is you dislike someone leave them alone. Trashy or classical novels. Nationalize banks and keep hedge funds rather than regulation of both. Barbell it. Dario says To make speculative bets, make chance of ruin is nil. Barbell is thought to be examined as strategy for return, but that’s missing the point it’s survival necessity not option. You would buy health insurance so you don’t fall into ruin, not cost efficient statistically obviously or how would insurance companies make money. barbell is domestication of uncertainty, not elimination.
Book 4 Optionality
Teleological fallacy is idea that you know where you are going and others succeeded in the past by knowing where they were going. Loyalty is opposite of optionally and should only be invested in relationships. Idea that people know what’s they well want tomorrow. Never ask people what they want. People don’t know what they want until you give it to them, Steve Jobs. America has rational trial and error and no shame of failure. Japanese opposite.
Chapter Optionality
Why it’s ok not to know what’s going on. Fuck you money, sum to get benefits of wealth like independence. Worst side effect is interacting with only other rich people. Option is function of asymmetry. Only harmed pay too much for options. Most are free or cheap with assumetry. We don’t need to understand when you have some edge. Vacation resort with most options more likely to find something you like. Won’t know yourself if you doing have options. Sour grapes. Can’aesop fable SourGrapes you can’t reach are sour. Parties have Optionality, big upside to open invite but no obligation. Rent controlled means you can move if price crashes and can’t increase if prices skyrocket. Option doesn’t care about average, only favorable because downside negligible. Better off to polarized people as politicians or author. No downside to someone extremely not buying your book. Some apartments for very rich can be separate market. Males have more people at both extremes. If you have Optionality, don’t need intelligence or skills. Just recognize favorable outcomes after they happen. Nature aborts half the embryos and uses Optionality rather than intelligence. Option is asymmetry plus rationality by taking what is good and ditched bad. Natural selection. Trial and error is options. Options benefit from variability and error. Errors like options. nonlinear. lottery effects? dumb counter, known randomness for casinos different than life. Upside can be much larger in life. Largest generators from tech from trial and error and real estate. Romans’ got political system by tinkering rather than reasoning. Intelligent actions and discoveries may not be from intelligence.
Teaching birds to fly
We lack imagination and use randomness to soon feed us for discovery. Egyptian has wheels on toys, but lugged Stones. Taking half invented into invented is real discovery. Technology has high mortality rate. “The simpler and more obvious the discovery, the less equipped we are to discover it through complicated methods”. Universities look for grandiose not wheels on suitcases. All we need to do is take more valuable opportunity or exercise the option. Removal of something non natural usually cost less. Find your wallet with risk and error, rationality is not searching same place twice. Creative destruction from Marx and neizche. Two types of knowledge: unexplainable or experience that we do anyway and academic, testable knowledge. In corpus, science knowledge leads to tech which leads to practical applications. Baconian model. Exact reverse seems to be true. Harvard lectures bird and it starts to fly. Harvard writes books and considered core of bird flight getting research grants. No one wonders if birds need lectures to fly. Birds don’t write papers. Now replace bird with men. If the student is smart, teacher gets credit. More like loop of random tinkering leads to tech leads to practice leads to tinkering. Academic theory leads to academic theory with few leaks. Compass moves ship. This error is called epiphenoma. Greed blamed on financial crisis, but ancient. Lack of vigilance seen as causes of failures instead of reduction of downsides. A causes B, can what happened first to at least disprove one change. People analyze his idea ancestors like one reads than knows instead of looking for book that support your thoughts. Cherry picking, discount ads, but not science conforming things. People talk about their successes. Never talk about harm caused by fields. Optionality to take only upside of history.
14 does knowledge generate wealth
Oil can create knowledge by buying universities in abu Dubai. Where are the stressors? Poverty makes experience. World bank economist showed no evidence Raising general education didn’t raise income at level of country. Or does wealth create education. So let’s look at countries and see what happened first. Sub Saharan Africa saw rapid increase in literacy and drop in living standards. Why don’t we say wealth caused by high society rate. Within a country, wealth causes education which gives you staying power in that class. But, didn’t work at county level. Egypt giant leap in education didn’t leap gdp. Education is equalizing within the society, so so good. But don’t promote for wealth. Us low math grade alarmism. British 50 years ago, education was about being a good citizen not increasing wealth. Entrepreneurs not best to have dinner with, interesting conversation indicates culture or tapped into thinking they know what they doing. Halo effect. Practitioners can be incomprehensible, do. Burrecat can have more interesting convo without actual feedback loops chosen on superficial metrics. People in foreign exchange you might think deeply read economic, but none of that mostly Italian New York from backroom of banks not education but street. Fat Tony beat against the convent oak wisdom that war caused oil price to increase, was priced in. War in Kuwait not increase in oil prices. One economists knows Economic is theory to create fables, not transferable to practice. You go to school to become blind to Optionality. Optionality vs narrative knowledge. Practices vs science. Small known rush and large upside vs unknown risks. Little understanding vs relies on knowledge. Idea doesn’t survive because idea is better but person survives. We are moving from grandmas to theory. Antifragile risk taking is responsible for innovation, but dressed up by historians discount practices.
Chp 15 history written by losers
Jet engine not physics but engineers tinkering. Architecture marketing by geometry, but from guild. Medicine marketed as biology but really trial and Error. Technically marketed as science but really business. Some traders ignore math and survive. Traders had much more sophistication than formula earlier. Traders trade then academics introduce theory and traders use them and then blow ups. Practitioners don’t write, they do. Those with time write. We create theories out of practice. He gave a paper about this in finance, similar paper shot jet engine done recently. Aqudects made without math risk numerals hard to use. Role of formal knowledge over appreciated because visible. Recipes embedded in culture. Neptune and Higgs boson is from theory but happens in physics. Bayes and Malthusian both clergy with a stable job, enlightened amateurs from hobbyists and doers. Government investment often diverts industry investment. Steam engine done with tech that existed and ingenuity tinkering. Belief in science organization, argument against telogic rather than research. Japanese and corporation like big pharma, probably better to do widespread investment in tinkerers. Vc invest in people. Innovations drift, without real business plans. Invest in all the options, more important to be in everything in small amount like VC. Private industry developed 9 out of 10.often invention from military; so not research. Studying chemical composition weekly make you better cook. Drugs discovered theologically are rare, mostly without understanding. Pin didn’t make single maker, but 25 guides without central plan. Logic stands outside us, not a single individual understand. Collaboration has 1+1= >2.
Private industry create 9 pt of 10. Only 3 out of 10 have federal funding involved. Researchers have end and even if they find another use they won’t care. They have end in mind. Knowledge in complex domains inhibits research, as medical knowledge increased medicine decreases. Argued is because of lower hanging fruit, but really.
Great skeptic either not religious or pro religious or want others to be religious. No evidence strategic planning works, makes corporation option blind. Coke started as medicine company.Evidence of absence is not abesnece of evidence. For antifragile good doesn’t show easily in past and fragile has bad not sure easily. Tinkering hides its qualities by having many long term losses sometimes. Ignoring positive asymmetry. What you don’t see can be hidden in past. Most biotech create no profit, extremism though. Insurance seems to be too profitable. Academics are confused. 1) look fire and rank Optionality 2) opened ended Payoffs 3) invest in people that can change 4) make sure you are barbell Ed
Empirical skeptic which are relatively unknown is basically this book. Practicers and tinkering seem as not intelligent. Sometimes people conflate there are some quacks among non research as only research is legit.
Chapter 16 lesson in disorder
Ecological has unknown rules and prob vs known. Skill transfer didn’t not apply to life. We get that chess grandmaster didn’t completely translate. Why don’t we think classroom knowledge also stays in classroom. Soccer mom try to remove them to ecological that are like computers but slowly unable to handle ambiguity. Bless the autodidact. Move start students away from their focus and they lose confidence and fall apart. Can be bored with a subject, but not reading. If you get bored of class your screwed. Author Reads 30-60 hours a week. Barbell about passing schooling and then studying elsewhere. 6 sigma events unrated, he saw early but was overwhelmed by math. Much of what other people know isn’t worth knowing.
Chapter 17 fat Tony debates Socrates
Fat Tony believes they were justified to put dictates to death. Error thinking things always have a reason we can comprehend. Socrates method is making people agree to series of statements then showing how these statements are inconsistent and they don’t know what they are doing. Fat Tony doesn’t answer questions he doesn’t understand. Frame the question yourself, you don’t need to understand to drink water or ride a bicycle. Socrates makes people confused about what they do fine tearing them from benefit of ignorance, and has no answer to offer them. Mistaking unintelligible to unintelligent, Written by Neitzche first book was against Socrates. He questioned goodness of knowledge. Neizche first to use creative destructive word. Logic excludes by definition nuance that truth relies on it is useless for social and political science. Tony distinction is sucker and not sucker. Instead of knowledge. Benefits to you much more important than which event. One consequence often much bigger than the other. We check for guns though we check everyone because we fragile. All decision based on fragility over true false. Confidence level ignores size of events. You’ve made many decisions, how many times have you completed probability. Need to rewrite history of technology. Harvard is like Gucci bag, status. Need brand name to get ahead.
Book 5 nonlinear and nonlinear
Hidden nonlinearity. Nonlinearity means response is not a line. He studied Volatility of volitality. He has been thinking of this one thing his entire life.
Chapter 18 convex ity
Fragility is vulnerable to volatility to things that affect it. 10 lb stone will cause more than double the damage of 5lb. Fragile bring higher harm as intensity increases. 7 glasses in one week worse, vs one night then 6 days off.
Why Fragility is nonlinear? single large effect can end life. Immune to small shocks or we would be dead, so must be robust to small events. No other way to be fragile, one large effect much worse. Concave curves inward vs convex or curve outward. If for given variation you have more upside than downside, it will be Convex. Travel cost fragile to number of cars, each additional car worse. Does Double exposure more than double harm? If so fragile. Corporation is not large small company. Nutrition all about consistency, but variability and stressors improve it. Health benefits of exercise convex with speed/weight. Squeeze is when you must do something at any cost. Too big extras prone to stress and companies. Poor record of merger seem to be harmful, concealed risk bring fragility. Fire sale can be absorbed by market if you are small, not if you are big wild cause massive percent loss. Can’t just look at benefits of size, without cost. Larger theaters but same door is bottleneck during fire. Arrival time never decrease travel time. Uncertainty makes it sure later. Also applies to projects. NonlinearSymmetry of negative convexity. Black swan increasing with world growing complexity and more and more uncertainty causing black swans. Us thought law would cost 60b but portion 2 T. Cost nonlinear. He says no nothing allowed to restrict this large complex nonlinearity. Traders vs computers create massive risk and swells with size. Better to pollute with 10 various ones then concentrate in one. When you get low on resources, switch done by one hunter gather tribe. Rich concentrate their activities. Wealth means more and more is different. Fragility lies in nonlinear.
Chapter 19 philosopher stone
Fannie ma did its own risk assessment and have negative concave payoffs. Fragile. Author was certain entire banking would collapse. Detecting acceleration of harm great way to test for fragility under uncertainty. Use scale to check weight, something you know instead of a model and predictions. Acceleration is convexity. Errors can wash out for some things like trading more or less then intended. Travel time has negative words. 3 modes Like errors, neural, or dislike. Ditch economics. Average can be less important than variation if your are fragile to changes. Grandma average 70 degrees, could be 0 then 140. And she would die. More nonlinear response means average less important. Conflation means things and something sane like cars onRoad and travel time. Can guess worse than random if nonlinear is large. If negative convexity, need to do much better than random.
Book 6 viva negativa
Negative way of describing what something is not. Statues carved by subtraction. Barbell about removing fragility. Acts of omission not seen as role. Charlatans will only give positive evidence. Chess grandmaster win by not losing and traders but not losing it all. Can predict person devoid of skills will eventually fail but not reverse. Success reached by not being a sucker. Negative knowledge more robust than knowledge. One observation can disprove but thousands don’t prove one. Karl popper. Political systems should be judged by how well they remove bad actors because bad guy can cause more harm than collective action of good ones. Gov should be stopped from restricting free man. Steve Jobs: “People think focus means saying yes to what your focus on, but really saying no to hundred other good ideas, I’m proud of the things I haven’t done as what J have done” simpler methods of forecasting much better than sophisticated ones. Just worry about black swan and rest of easy. Winner take all effects. Small number of homeless have most cost and small share of customers most of profits, small share of employees. Sickest 10% consume 60% of medical costs. The invisible gorilla., more data worse. Obvious good decisions require no more than one reason, if you attack someone with more than argument not real. Long bio sucks, philosopher should be known for one idea.
Chapter 20 time and fragility
Time is the same as disorder. If you imagine future Odds are imagination adds stuff to present world, better to take away stuff that is fragile. Fragile will break and easier to see. Long term prediction that something will break can be more confident than short term plans because more time. Our lives very similar to past. Glass, wine, friends, cheese, chair, immigrant drive cab. Condom is very consequential though. Utopia of the moment, future of desires. Neediness lack of charm, object instead of person, neglect looks, precision over applicability, denigration of history and lit. Technology best when disrupt previous tech not natural. Media. Large corps. Internet removed paper work. The lindy effect. Non perishable vs perishable. Non perishable is idea of automobile and genes vs specific car and person. For non perishable, old expected to live longer then young. Perishable every day adds shorter life expectancy. Non perishable ages in reverse. Expected life of items related to past life. Technology most prone to age are already dead. Young advance come from bravery but their new ideas are fragile because new ideas are. Investors hear about successes, not failure. Error of variant ion instead of total. Phone change more but water much more important. Impulse to slightly change on the treadmill for phone buying. People acquire with boost of satisfaction then level out industrial , but not seem to be case with dishes or painting aristanial. Urban planning is irreversible, natural is fractal. Most expensive sections in Paris ones left alone. Author likes complexity in architecture and windows. Thumb is inch, foot is foot, mile is 1000 paces. Lindsey effect read old books, as little books of last 20 years. Breakthrough not seen when released. Conference paper odds important is very small. Career professionals are like a prostitution for love. All his peers do is read timely material that becomes obselote. No one becomes prophet in their own land, punished often. If you believe new ideas are important, you would think people would try to actually be me not standard. Writing and human so long because match something deep.
Chapter 21 medicine and asymmetry
Medicine dialectic of doing and thinking. No natural needs to prove its benefits. Smoking was thought to be healthy. Do you have evidence? Is absence of evidence evidence of absence? About risks involved. Why use ice to reduce swelling if it’s our bodies response. Where’s the benefit? Comfortable fragile ness. Principles of androgens 1) Do not need evidence of harm, naïve empiricism. Benefits seem obvious and immediate, but long term effects very harmful and delayed. 2) Nonlinearity. Benefits often rise for worse cases. But downside constant, so should ignore most cases. Body likely to find chemicals that are sheets good rather than rare illness. Normal blood pressure not pre high blood pressure because of companies pushes for profit among even the healthy. Lung better with variation in pressure. Random calories vs stay nutrition. Varying evidence. Acne used to be removed through radiation that later caused cancer. Sunscreen? Want better health not lower blood pressure. Doctor only punished for not intervening. Back operation usually not very beneficial, but obvious problem. Antibiotics create resistance. Excessive hygiene same effect. Child psychiatrist. Many examples. No clear evidence sugar free drinks stop weight gain. Food conveys info about environment and change behavior. If something about better you don’t understand, there is something rigorous about it unless proven otherwise. Nature is statically significant with experience. Human body not adapted sure, but better nature to good. Empirical effect is enough without theory. Explanations change all the time. Experience constant. Adding neuro to a field lets it Pretend though no real understanding. Medicine 3 traditions: rationalist need theories, skeptics empiricist, Methodists practical. Weight of prior beliefs. He is empiricist. Greeks have word for both poison and medicine. Random variability in blood pressure, but on half doctor could authorize prescribe. Quants barely understands standard deviation in their real life.
Chapter 22 living longer
Life expectancy has increased. Medicine with low androgen is a contribution, can’t conclude all medicine is good. Strikes that delay non critical treatments rarely have impact on life expectancy. We think life exptenach of 30 in past, many people lived long life likely death in childhood. Men died from trauma usually. Gain more societal. 50 years only 4 months added to someone 60 years old. Mammogram yearly for older women if anything decreases life experience cuz doctor see some shit and “treats” it. Not smoking is better than curing cancer. Caloric restriction pretty helpful, can cure diabetes or more natural food. Aspirin lets you Ignore cause of headache. Modern fries extremely sweet. Things called healthy usually aren’t. Social media antisocial. Knowledge based economy usually ignorant. Decadent rejected traditionally. Gods succeed where doctor fail, not going to doctor but church was historically better. Remove steadiness of food consumption. Omnivores eat steadily, but predators East sporadically. We are probably antifragile to sporadic food consumption. Greek Orthodox has 100 days of fast. Theory is body eats itself like a vacuum getting bag out, but Ewho cares it works empirically. Mice while starting starving can survive more chemotherapy. Honorable death worst fear for Greek, doing for community more individualistic. Attempt at immortality by taking 200 pills. Gene should be one selling immortality.
Book 7 ethics of fragility
Chapter 23 skin in the game
Agency problem. Modern disappearance of sense of heroism, deprive themselves for sake of others. Sacrifice. Knights were those willing to take most downside. Happy life was principle of death in battle. Socrates for sacrifice life for ideas. Hates modern values. Most Glanditors were volunteered. Face risk with dignity. In harmbee code, builder will sure if they build a house that kills someone. Every opinion maker needs skin In the game and something to lose as people rely on it. Put entrepreneur on top of the organic, but right not grants talkers. Pundits rarely face downside, no penalty. Ancient leaders fight in the battlefield George Washington and Napoleon. Post doctors always say they predicted something after it happens, especially the talkers. Predictors should have visible scars from prediction errors. Stiglet syndrome. Asserted in Fannie ma that probability of cost to taxpayers was so small it was invisible. Then he postdicted the crisis and became more renowned expert. Nasty cherry-picking where you cause something harmful, but believe you were right all along. Only need consistency in one idea. Cure is to never ask for forecast or recommendation just what they are investing in. Never ask doctor what you should do but what he would do it he eat in your place. Frequency of how often right not important more about rewards. Suckers try to win arguments, nonduckers try to win . Bucreats live off rewards and per review so marketing. He suggesting no more than government salary if your roof be billed off. Roman soldier sighed post to be punished on failure. If an legion loses battle,m based on cowardice , would decimation which means kill one in 10. Does scientific research apply his ideas to his life? Champagne socialist advocate for socialism while living lavish life of what no to do. Soul in the game. Prophets. Commitment. In church Greek is glorification, cost less and takes it to natural conclusion. Difference between manger and owners. Bank have lost more than ever in history while mangers only get one side of risk. Manners antifragile and love volitality with more jagged stock price. Society posts but no bonus. Mahers can cash in bonus if no losses in 5 years maybe. Used to kill bankers who went bust. Adam Smith used in selective manual. Most journalists don’t read source but each other. Smith questionable to early version of llc. Transfer of antifragile from small to large. Small artisan good, large usually suck. No product he had discovered through ads or marketing. Company expert at makin lowest quality cheese that counts in your mind. Marketing items is necessarily inferior. Corporation file goal is done metric and didn’t feel honirw, generosity embarrassment. Workers care shout short term flows. Individuals have sense of honor. Mafia word is bond as do traders. Honor leads to commerce.
Chapter 24 during ethics to profession
Everyone needs to makes living. Does ethics lead to profession or reverse? Treadmill effect, need to make more and to stay in same place. Roman circumvent by having wealth give to our and East with them their constituents. Provincial landlords would hold open house of locals, duty. Solder didn’t really wish for peace. Smith says self interest can serve growth. Farmer, war, artisans despised most. He is free if your own your opinion. Can’t be squeezed. Sissy stay unfree no matter how much money. To establish shame. Anyone who goes into public servant shouldn’t be short to make more anymore, to prevent jump to industry. Moral hazard. Legal is not ethical. More complex system regulator edge increases and arbitrary by insight. Regulators incentives to have more. In African explicit bribes, but in American is a cushy job later. Statement often made to benefit themselves disguised as altruism. If someone had opinion good to be invested, but then general statements Amir society shouldn’t be invested. Should believe moreIn the opposite of conflict of interest, when someone shared opinion against their interest. Researchers get free option of coding best statistics and truth gets the downside. Observation studies(8 out of 10 spurious) vs double blind. 200 random variable very possible to find high correlation between 2. Researchers can do post hypothesis and Ignore they fainted. Very hard to replicate. Science must not be competition, knowledge should have agency problem. Everyone dies x so better to learn if you want a job over truth. Departments need to tech something. A single person with courage can bring down intuition. I am ethical and ethics classes dumb.
Chapter 25 conclusion
Golden rule. ThisBook. Everything gains or losses from volitality, fragile losses. This is the central argument generators. Time is volitality. Education like disorder. Innovation gains for uncertainty, LIng disorder vs dirty disorder. Everything nonlinear is comes out concave, everything like our gates it up to point. Mother Nature tinkering. Barbell. C can be beyond our understand. Distributed randomness is necessary. Big and fat haters volitality. Ethical life needs personal risk.
Review: after reading black swan, I can say this is convincingly the better book. So many dense excellent and unique ideas. Unwritten rules of thought that are obvious when said aloud like observable effects are much more timeless than theories that explain it. If the cost is small and benefit great, the actual probabilities don’t really matter you should do it. The book does begin slow and some sections can best be summarized as author doesn’t like X. However the insight is worth it.