Antifragile
2012
- resilience (personality trait)
- psychology / general
- business & economics / general
- long now manual for civilization
- social aspects
- uncertainty (information theory)
- forecasting
- complexity (philosophy)
- psychological resilience
- psychological adaptation
The story
"The acclaimed author of the influential bestseller The Black Swan, Nicholas Nassim Taleb takes a next big step with a deceptively simple concept: the "antifragile." Like the Greek hydra that grows two heads for each one it loses, people, systems, and institutions that are antifragile not only withstand shocks, they benefit from them. In a modern world dominated by chaos and uncertainty, Antifragile is a revolutionary vision from one of the most subversive and important thinkers of our time. Praise for Nicholas Nassim Taleb "[This] is the lesson of Taleb. and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable."--Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point "[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne."--The Wall Street Journal "The most prophetic voice of all. [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher. someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone."--GQ "Changed my view of how the world works."--Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate"-- "Examples of Antifragility: When you stress your body by lifting a big weight, your body gets stronger. New York has the best restaurants in the world because particular restaurants are always going bust, making the aggregate stronger and stronger, or antifragile. Evolution is antifragile. Certain business and investment strategies are antifragile. Older things tend to be more antifragile than newer ones - because they've been exposed to more Black Swans"--
What it’s like
Dense, argumentative nonfiction with a restless, wry voice: a sharp-edged essayist who keeps circling back to the same few ideas through a jumble of anecdotes, aphorisms, asides about traders, Roman history, restaurants and the human body. The prose is confident and conversational, often sardonic toward experts and economists, and it reads more like a long argument with a sparring partner than a tidy textbook. The mood is bracing rather than cozy, a brisk intellectual cold shower with bursts of humor, best suited to a focused afternoon with a notebook, or to a long-haul flight when you want ideas to chew on. Pacing is uneven: fast, punchy stretches of maxims alternate with long digressive passages that pile up examples before landing a point. Emotionally it stays detached and combative, with a steady undercurrent of impatience toward fragility and fashionable forecasting. Intensity is low: no violence or sexual content, though the talk of financial collapse, war and crisis gives it a tense, unsettling edge. For readers who enjoy provocative big-picture thinking about risk, resilience and uncertainty, and who don't mind being argued with.
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