Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
About the author and the book
Nicholas Taleb is a mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst. He is also an empiricist and the apologist of old wisdom. He doesn’t think that academic knowledge is superior and we must understand the mechanism in order to understand the effectiveness or phenomenology. The book is crammed with lots of fine phrases and intriguing asides, trying to teach us how to live with randomness, or even exploit it — with the property of antifragility that derives from natural systems.
Background while creating this article
It’s my very first trial of writing book review in English rather than Chinese, which is my mother language. In fact, the decision is very hard for me because it somehow contradicts to the rule of approaching your target readers, those who are prone to be more comfortable in reading Chinese article.
However, my goal are neither gaining popularity by attracting as much followers as possible nor preaching about what I believe. I focus on growth mindset and surpass my former existence. I used to write some monthly reflection articles in English but cease publication after being bogged down by a lack of sense of achievement and the following negative energy.
Fortunately, crisis is the turning point. During the time at compulsory military service, I got plenty of time thinking about the blueprint of my future and my life meaning. The final answer is that I have enthusiasm for standing on the stage announcing cutting-edge products, which could make the world better. It is also one of the reasons that motivates me to pursue a master degree in U.S. It allows me to study and work abroad to gain experience from global company and distinctive people. Therefore, if I am assured that advancing my English writing and speaking is completely beneficial for my career, hesitating to do the right things is illogical.
What is Antifragile
Everything gains or loss from volatility. Fragility is what loses from volatility and uncertainty. The falling glass or unprotected iPhone are fragile.
Usually we consider robust as the antonym of fragile. However, robust just lies between fragile and antifragile. To recognize where people or things are on the triad (Antifragility, Robustness, Fragility), we simply need to observe how they react to the randomness. Fragility hates randomness because it losses from it; robustness doesn’t care much about randomness; antifragility loves randomness because it grows every time when facing uncertainty.
Taking occupation for example, Teleb holds that employee in big corporation is fragile because volatility makes them unpleasant. The black swan effect could force them jobless or even homeless. Taxi drivers are robust because they don’t react much to the black swan effect and still live their life. Artists (Youtuber hasn’t emerged at that time) are antifragile because the more haters or adherents they draw, the more popular they are, so do the profit. The book raises lots of example in different fields including biology, economy, education, business, and so on.
Naive Intervention — Overcompensation and Overreaction is everywhere
People intrinsically love comfort. They put excessive effort to make sure everything happens under their control. From the angle of human revolution, however, brain under noises can be more vigorous, analytical to filter the noise — thanks to the overcompensation mechanism. In business tricks, giving an urgent task to the busiest (or the second busiest) person in the office can facilitate efficiency because most human manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, unmotivated — the busier they get, the more active they are at the task. In physiological training like deadlifting, overcompensation mechanism makes our body a little stronger than before because our brain anticipate next slightly heavier weight. The author takes advantage of such mechanism by only focusing on exceeding the past maximum lifting weight to avoid spending time on un-entertaining and time-consuming repetitions.
Overcompensation manifests overreaction in the modern society. Soccer moms protect their children from being harmed by the world’d disorder while depriving their children’s opportunity to gain through small and unharmed stress(mistakes); the modern disease of touristification treats human like machine that try to make matters highly predictable in their smallest detail for the sake of comfort, convenience and efficiency. Sometimes overreaction caught us into the “golden jail.”
Takeaway
It strikes me that over years and years my effort to make life schedule is more wasteful and redundant than I previously think. To be more specific, scheduling is not always bad. It ensures organization and mental security, but also provokes panic and negative feeling when disorder comes. To averse dullness and be more antifragile, I start adding more flavor(variance) to my life. The case of touristification remind me of my backpacking experience in Korea, Thailand and Myanmar 2 to 3 years ago. Almost every unexpected events, scenery, and people I had met without scheduling are surprising, unforgettable and unique.
Concavity and Convexity — Technically detect what is fragile and antifragile
To detect the property of antifragility, we can simply draw a two-dimensional map. Fragility shows negative concavity while antifragility show positive convexity.
Car accident is an example of fragility. Let’s compare the consequence of bumping your car into a concrete wall in 100 km/H 1 time and 5 km/H but separate the risk to 20 times. The former is way serious than the latter, thus, the graph indicates car accident to be negatively concave.
Antifragility, on the other hand, benefitted more from stressor. Lifting 100kg for 1 rep produces more outcome than 10kg for 10 reps.
Takeaway
The concept can be highly used in lots of field. In angle investment, although every 10 times your money probably burns to ashes 9 times, the only time your success get you a huge return(on condition that you can survive after multiple failure); in poker strategy, good player will frequently play highly potential card like78 suited or small pair like 22 under agreeable odd. The winning rate may be even lower than A high at preflop, but once it hits the nut such as set, straight, or flush, it could potentially double your stack. So, don’t superficially look at short-term effect, take a step back and estimate the long-term effect.
Barbell Strategy
Personally speaking, Barbell strategy is the most impressive part in the whole book. Its core can be visualized by the barbell in the gymnasia — heavy at 2 sides and light at the middle. The barbell strategy is an investment concept suggesting that the best way to strike a balance between reward and risk is to invest in the two extremes of high-risk and no-risk assets while avoiding middle-of-the-road choices. Taleb believes that such a mixture of hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive ensure the maximum loss(option premium/startups turn to dust) and infinite return(negative black swan effect/startups go IPO and stock price skyrocket).
Though the concept originates from finance, it can be transferred to different area. In profession selection, you can invest your time in a secure job like software engineer in Google(good work life balance) while launching entrepreneurial project; in marathon training, 80% of easy run and 20% intense run is more beneficial for lung pressure and body recovery.
Takeaway
The strategy is a little bit counter-intuitive since most of us are more comfortable in medium stage where volatility is temporarily controlled while the gain potential are also limited. Besides, most people and friends around you are at the same stage with you, which fortify our comfort fortress. I think it is a great chance to challenge myself by smartly applying such strategy in different circumstances.
Skin in the game
Taleb advocates that people who do not take risk should never be involved in making decisions. If one's skin is in the game, it means that he/she will reap the benefit in positive outcome meanwhile paying a price for negative outcome. For example, pilots skin are in the game because once their airplanes crash, they will pay at the price of their lives. The same philosophy are also applied in the old time. Dated back to ancient Rome, bridge constructors would be asked to live under bridges they had built for a period of time to expose their skin in the game.
Therefore, Taleb thinks that never ask anyone for their opinion, forcast or recommendation. Just ask them what they have or don't have in their portfolio.
Takeaway
I search for skin in the game on Youtube and the algorithm recommend this Steve Jobs philosophy video to me. I reflect on my past after watching this short yet profound talk. It seems that I pay too much energy and attention on thinking brilliant ideas but seldom put them into practices. To quote Jobs, it is like having lots of gorgeous fruit pictures(2 dimension) on the wall, but without the experience of actually tasting them, you never get 3 dimension.
Summary
The book contains too many useful content to share within 5 minutes’ read. With the limit of time, I decide to only keep the quintessential. If you are interested in some detail story or review in Chinese version, this one is what I recommend. Feel free to leave comment! Your idea/criticism on the book, the author, or my article could make me more antifragile.
