Been reading ‘Antifragile’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, its a pretty entertaining read. He is quite bracing in his writing and doesn’t give any quarter to the group of people he describes as ‘fragilistas’.
Lots of interesting ideas, the kind of book that makes you rethink what your being told when faced with the news. I’m not sure I can summarise a book this long. If I could would he be any kind of writer? Think I’m still absorbing the ideas and trying them out on situations I’m faced with. I’ll just list some of the things in the book that grabbed my attention.
- Optionality
- Extremistan
- Iatrogenics – and the lack of science in medicine
- Turkeys and Non Turkeys
- Suckers and Non Suckers
- Antifragility isn’t == to robustness
- Retrospectively assigning causes to events.
- Listen to the greatest or the lowest but nothing in between
- Informal knowledge can be more valuable than formal knowledge
- If people are wrong and you can see what is happening you ethically obliged to tell them
- If they have no skin in the game – what they say should be ignored
- Neomania – and avoiding blinkered ness
Not sure I’m at the authors level on this stuff but it was an interesting read. Seemed to interest me more than ‘The Black Swan’ which I read a while ago. Left me thinking how I can make me and my work Antifragile.
