I have to start by saying that Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of my favorite authors. I don’t necessarily sympathize with him for the success he enjoys, but rather for the ironically realistic way in which he enlivens his stories in all his books. He’s like a wise man who has seen enough and no longer cares about political correctness or false politeness, but simply says things the way he thinks, brutally funny at times. And his “passion” for Nobel laureates, which more or less deserves its distinctions, is absolutely fabulous.
Antifragile is the last book I read written by him. Before that I read the following titles written by him: The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Skin in The Game and The Bed of Procrustes. However, even he says in the book that Antifragile is the cornerstone of all his books. I put the foundation at the end, that’s it.
Now, what is this concept of anti-fragility? In short, Taleb tells us this: when the stress factor is dosed enough not to kill / destroy, that factor leads to constant improvement. You understand everything, don’t you? That’s the way it is with this philosophy.
More broadly, in order to have a term of comparison, the book proposes a framework of analysis for most elements, domains and contexts in our world. This analysis framework comprises 3 dials: fragile, robust and anti-fragile. The book makes a very interesting comparison with characters from Greek mythology. Let’s briefly define what each dial represents.
Fragile, it is that element that once subjected to stress dies, disappears, is no more. I do not remember exactly who is the correspondent in Greek mythology, but imagine that we are talking about a young man who lives in comfort in the 21st century. You leave him on the top of the mountain for a week and you might bring him back after 3 days with a medical helicopter because he didn’t have hot water to take a shower, he caught a cold, then he got depressed because he didn’t have internet and so on further, fragility.
Robust is that element in the dial that is associated with the Phoenix bird. You can put him under stress and destroy him a million times, he will be reborn and will always be the same. Just like in a video game. It’s not bad to be robust sometimes, I think.
Antifragile, the pearl of the crown, is the element associated with a slightly negative character from Greek mythology, namely Hydra, that unfriendly monster with several heads, who had an ability that defines antifragility: if you cut off one of his heads, he would grow two instead. Play this! That is, once subjected to stress, it becomes even stronger.
This thing makes you think a little. I did that also and I realized that sometimes, I managed to be anti-fragile. Always after the hard times I went through, I know very, very well what I got better with. I mean, in my opinion the concept is valid and I think each of us has his own examples.
The problem here arises when we know the benefits of controlled exposure to stressors that can help us become stronger and better, but still look for comfort, the easy way, the way that helps us become fragile and risk disappearing.
Here I see from the plane a clear resemblance to the position of Ray Dalio in his book “PRINCIPLES FOR DEALING WITH THE CHANGING WORLD ORDER”, where he claims that all the great empires in the written history of the world, fell after reaching the top, because the last generation has become too comfortable and therefore fragile.
Furthermore, the book deals in a number of stories with many applied cases of this concept in various fields, from medicine to business. I highly recommend this, because honestly, I would very much like to have a society in which stressors are seen as opportunities for improvement. But, as Mahatma Gandhi used to say: “Be the change you want to see in the world”, so first of all I still have work to do with me.
The book can be bought here: https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680/
