Antifragile | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Book Summary

best book pets.com presents anti fragile things that gain from disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb published in 2012 an wane of 544 pages a book on how some systems actually benefit from disorder in anti fragility in the seem offers a definite solution had a gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events for what he calls anti fragile is one step beyond robust as it benefits from adversity uncertainty and stresses just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension Talib stands uncertainty on its head making it desirable and postponing

that things be built in an anti fragile manner extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary antifragility provides a blueprint for how to behave and thrive in a world we don't understand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand he who is not anti fragile will perish the book summary can be found on our website best befits calm so without further ado I bring the box summary of ante fragile the anti fragile the central theme of the book is antifragility which telev defines in the prologue some things benefit from shocks they thrive and grow when

exposed to volatility randomness and disorder and stressors and love adventure risk and uncertainty yet in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile let us cord anti fragile antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness the resilient resists shock and stays the same the anti fragile gets better another way to formulate it is anything that has a more upside than downside from random events shocks and egg will not benefit from having a 5 lab weight put on it but your body can become stronger through similar stressors this builds

on the arguments in Black Swan where there's a Black Swan event the anti fragile can throw but the fragile will frequently perish put it another way the anti fragile can benefit from positive black swans fragility implies more to lose than to gain equals more downside than upside equals unfavorable asymmetry antifragility implies more to gain than to lose equals more upside than downside equals favorable asymmetry Damocles Phoenix and Hydra tell abusers ancient examples to explain the triad of fragile robust and anti fragile Damocles who dines with a sword dangling over his head is fragile a small

stress to the string holding the sword would kill him the Phoenix who dies and is reborn from its ashes is robust it always returns to the same state when suffering a massive stressor but the Hydra demonstrates antifragility when one head is cut off to grow back nature nature is a recurrent demonstration of antifragility when he lifts weights your body attempts to lift heavier weights next time but for human systems that we tend to fight the last war building a nuclear power plant that can withstand the worst earthquake that we've ever seen destroys an effect and

criticism this is also demonstrated in the Streisand effect where the desire to kill an idea can directly lead to its proliferation banned books are a good example or the popularity of Ayn Rand despite her aggressive detractors or try not to think of a white elephant and see what happens fragile and anti fragile jobs talib also shows the Rakata me between certain lines of work and their fragility as an author for example nothing he can do that generates attention will reduce the sale of his books however if you were a mid-level executive employee at some Bank

if you punch out an annoying drunk in a bar you will likely get fired get an arrest record and be unhireable you're extremely fragile and then again at the lower end of the spectrum say as a taxi driver you have more freedom again because you are not so dependent on your reputation he also provides a heuristic people who don't seem to care how they dress or walk a road bust all anti fragile people will have to wear suits and ties worried about a bad reputation are fragile germane dependence sometimes we understand something in one area

but fail to carry over the underlying logic in another domain many statisticians understand statistics but still get tripped up by simple thought experiments people are taken elevator to the gym to use the Stairmaster while we understand the benefits of stress in medicine and health we fail to carry it over to other parts of life small stressors on your income can be good for keeping you from accumulating silent risk or becoming cocky small fights in your relationship can help it become stronger and avoid big fights the procrustean bed tell abuses the procrustean bed story to demonstrate

how we create harm by reducing variations procrustean would capture travellers and put them in his bed stretching them on a rack if they were too short for it or chopping off their extremities if they were too tall when we destroy variation to fit a model we do similar harm the turkey problem a bigger theme in the Black Swan but the turkey problem is how you can imagine a turkey raised and fed from birth becoming more sure every day that it will continue to be well fed and taken care of based on its past evidence right

up until Thanksgiving burdens donkey a donkey equally hungry and thirsty stuck between a bale of hay and water won't die of starvation and thirst unable to make a decision between the two however a random nudge in one direction will solve the problem for him randomness can help with decision making and becoming unstuck but when we try to reduce it we lose the beneficial stressor stoicism talib invokes stoic principles on multiple occasions as ways of handling randomness and becoming more anti fragile for example success can make you fragile because you now have much more to lose

than you did before you're afraid of becoming poor the stoic technique of practicing poverty helps reduce your fragility from being afraid of losing your wealth for mears small stresses and inverse homies Mears is another example of antifragility by taking small doses of poison you can develop more immunity to it just as vaccinations use a small dose of a disease to train your body to resist it's stronger form we see a similar anti fragile benefits from fasting weight lifting running and we also see that depriving systems of these beneficial stressors is harmful as is evidenced by

any person who has never been hungry or never exercised aging talib argues is hastened by a lack of stress we are living longer but people are more sick all of our comfort has been detrimental to our health Spence we thought aging causes a bone degradation but it seems that bone degradation causes aging competition this can also be acquired to competition the best horses lose when they compete with slow ones and win against stronger rivals absence of challenge can degrade the best of us absence of challenge can degrade the best of us distraction another example static

background noise makes it easy to pick up radio signals Rodan in cafes where that background conversations helps you focus we want a little stress but not too much moods to leave also points out how many people are being put on antidepressants and how mood swings are a natural part of the human condition if someone is truly suicidal sure but the ability to wrestle with our dark side is a part of life and a great inspiration for creative language he also points out how real language learning is done in the world suffering embarrassment for not knowing

things and struggling to be understood it is not done through textbooks and tests as is evidenced by any child learning their first language problems with modern tea till it points out numerous problems the modern life mostly arising from removing the natural stresses that help us lines in the zoo consider the life of a lion in zoo and in the wild the lion in a zoo might live longer but is that really a desirable existence until it points out that we used to have free range humans before such things as suits and soccer moms and gym

machines native intervention and art regenexx there's a mistaken desire to intervene particularly from doctors that can lead to it-- regenexx which means harm caused by the healer harm from the doctors accounts for more deaths than any single cancer there are two forms the obvious art regenexx such as amputating the wrong leg and the non-obvious audrey Denix such as carelessly prescribing antidepressants and ADHD medication the agency problem part of the issue comes from the agency problem where the agent doctor has different interest from the receiver of his services the patient editing till he shares a story

of his article being aggressively edited for writing style by the washington post so he pulled it and gave it to the Financial Times who only made one edit to correct a date he points out that the wapi in trying to over edit miss the only important error good procrastination till it points out that the procrastination is not always bad it is something deep within us that is able to identify the urgency of a problem we don't procrastinate when a line is attacking but procrastinating responding to an email is probably fine related the cure to procrastination

on the job is not to force yourself to create systems that fix it rather than find an occupation where you do not have to fight your impulses and where you do not procrastinate the barbell and the bimodal strategy the barbell demonstrates an anti fragile balance the idea of the two extremes kept separate with avoidance in the middle this represents a plane at very safe in some areas a stain robust to negative black swans and taking a lot of small risks in another area open to positive black swans to take advantage of antifragility while avoiding being

in the middle if you put 90% of your net worth in cash or t-bills and use the other 10% for extremely aggressive and risky investments you can never lose more than 10% of your net worth but if you're exposed to massive upside or you can take a very safe day job while you work on your literature you balance the extreme readiness and riskiness of a running career with a safe job or you do a serial barbell we have pure action and pure reflection Seneca and Monta gain more examples do crazy things that break furniture once

in a while like the Greeks during the last later stages of a drinking synopsis and stay rational in larger decisions trashy gossip magazines and classics or sophisticated works never middlebrow stuff talk to either undergraduate students cab drivers and gardeners or the highest calibre scholars never to Medellin but career conscious academics if you dislike someone leave him alone or eliminate him don't attack him verbally optionality telev discusses optionality freedom of choice as a means of robustness and antifragility simply the more options you have the more freedom you have to respond to unforeseen circumstances and the less

fragile you are to certain events financial independence is a big form of it but there are others certain fields do not have negative forms there's no opposite of someone buying your book so the authors have more options because they have a less downside tinkerin Talib is a big proponent of trial-and-error which he calls tinkering as a way to figure things out and expose yourself to larger potential upsides many great inventions were toys first the steam engine was invented by the Greeks for amusement and I took a long time for us to realize it had practical

applications the teleological fallacy the error that you know where you were going and that you knew exactly where you were going in the past and the others had succeeded in the past by knowing where they were going one form of this is teaching birds how to fly where till he points out that a Harvard or theological department could explain the mathematics of what and how birds wings work but the birds do not need to understand that in order to fly telev also argues against the master pupil relationship arguing that those relationships developed because the people

will like-minded not that they became like-minded because of the relationship a personal note on this I've come to believe more and more that the right books and IIT is not about completely teaching you something new rather helping you fully articulate something that you already began to think about the green lumber fallacy talib tells a story of someone who traded green lumber and made a considerable profit from it or tinkering that green lumber was literally logs painted green not knowing it was fresh wood but not knowing this fact did not affect his ability to trade it

effectively so when we assume some information is necessary and important when it really isn't we're committing the green lumber fallacy as another formulation you do not need to understand aerodynamics or physics to ride a bicycle some rules for optionality number one look for optionality and rank things according to their optionality number two look the things with open-ended not closed-ended payoffs and three do not invest in business plans but in people people who could change careers six or seven times and number four make sure you are bar belt whatever that means in your business non-linearity for

the fragile the cumulative effect of small shocks is smaller than the single effect of a single large shock for the anti fragile shocks bring more benefits or worse harm and say intensity increases up to a point example 15 100 pounds white once is more beneficial then in a one-pound weight a hundred times your flight never gets in four hours early but you can certainly arrive four hours late anything unexpected any shock is much more likely to extend the total flying time ergo flight schedules are fragile another example don't cross a river if it's on average

4 feet deep via negativa by removal talib argues that the solution to many problems in life is by removing things not adding them by removing things not adding them decision making if you have more than one reason to do something don't do it by invoking more than one reason to do something you were trying to convince yourself to do it obvious decisions robust to errors require no more than one good reason The Linde effect for the perishable food and humans every additional day in its life means it is closer to dine for the non-perishable books

ideas every additional day of its life can you point a longer life expectancy if a book has been in print for a hundred years ever likely continue to be read for another hundred years but a person who has been alive for 100 years hmm no mania there is a class of things typically technology weather obsessed by having the newest version of it for the classical art literature works that have endured older tends to be better you'll likely replace your phone every two years but not the painting on your wall medicine there's no good evidence for

the benefits of reducing swelling but we automatically do it as part of the reflex to do something there are also causes where we get small immediate benefits and ignore the unknown larger side effects down the line this would include drugs like a filler to mine and nutritional interventions might get transferred when we find something that seems to have a free lunch like steroids or transfer something that helps the healthy without a clear downside it is likely there will be a concealed trap somewhere it's a sucker's bet some more real and potent examples Vioxx and anti-inflammatory

medicine that ends up causing heart issues barbaric surgery for overweight people in place of dieting antidepressants in non-suicidal cases courtesan disinfectants and other cleaning products hormone replacement therapy hysterectomies cesarean births when the mother won't otherwise die whitening of rice wheat sunscreen excessive hygiene not eating dirt high fructose corn syrup soy milk child psychiatry he specifies though that nitrogen X's only concern when someone is not terminal if they are at the risk of death art regenexx don't matter it's the little unnecessary interventions that are problematic he also specifies that what Mother Nature does and has done

is rigorous until proven otherwise but what humans do is flawed until proven otherwise nature's fats turn out to be very healthy humor design ones not so much treating the tumor that will not kill you shortens your life since chemotherapy is toxic diet drink no liquid that isn't at least a thousand year old wine water or coffee eat nothing invented or reengineered by humans while consuming plants they would have been regular meat auricular so it won't make sense to eat mostly plant-based most of the time then feast on meat intermittently in nature we have to expend

energy to eat lines do not eat then hunt for fun fasting is quite good for us and natural we do not need to load up on food before doing something rather refeed after other removals I would add that in my own experience a considerable jump in my personal health has been achieved by removing offensive irradiance the morning newspaper the boss the daily commute air conditioning though not heating television emails from documentary filmmakers economic forecasts new about the stock market Jim strength training machines and many more wealth he also points out that their ill health and

early death of many rich people and argues if true wealth consists in wireless sleeping clear conscious reciprocal gratitude absence of envy good appetite muscle strength physical energy frequent lasts no meals alone no gym class some physical labor or hobby good bowel movements no meeting rooms and periodic surprises then it is largely subtractive elimination of ight regenexx the ethics of fragility and anti fragility two rules for the skin in the game number one never get on a plane if the pilots is not on board and number two make sure there is also a co-pilot another rule

never ask anyone for their opinion forecast or recommendation just ask them what they have or don't have in their portfolio what what people do not what they say watch what people do not what they say many researchers on happiness are earning more than $70,000 a year despite their own research saying it won't make them any happier only large corporations can afford to sell you things that kill you small ones go bust too easily so there is a risk from taking advice and products that could not survive on small scales something being marketed is necessarily inferior

otherwise it would not need to be aggressively marketed marketing beyond conveying information is insecurity the pursuit of meaning within big data has brought about many more spurious and random relationships than meaningful understanding the false relationships will grow much faster than the real ones simply because the chance allows so many more of them to be found quotations wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire if you see a fraud and do not say fraud you are a fraud a man is morally free when he judges the world and judges other men with uncompromising certainty if humans find

the last war nature fights the next one ancestral life has no homework no boss no civil servants no academic grades no conversation with the Dean no consultation with an MBA no table of procedure no application form no trip to New Jersey no grammar cool stick one no conversation with someone boring you or wife was random stimuli and nothing good or bad ever felt like work dangerous yet but boring never this is a central visioning life that randomness is risky that it is a bad thing and that eliminating randomness is it done by eliminating randomness convincing

and confident disciplines seis of physics tend to use little statistical backup while but political science and economics which has never produced anything of note a full of elaborate statistics and statistical evidence and you know that once you remove the smoke the evidence is not evidence the situation in science is similar to detective novels in which the person with the largest number of alibis turns out to be the guilty one I derive the rule that which is called healthy is generally unhealthy just as social networks are anti-social and the knowledge-based economy is typically ignorant the best

way to justify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations remember that food would not have taste if it were not for hunger results are meaningless without effort joy without sadness convictions without uncertainty and an ethical life isn't so when stripped of personal risks and that's a wrap on anti fragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb subscribe to our channel now for future summaries and check out our website best book beats calm for the written summary and more to buy the book use that with an hundreds more to browse and purchase thanks for watching

and I hope you learned a thing or two about anti fragile have yourself an amazing day and stay tuned for more