It’s hard for me to discern how much of Nassim Taleb’s work has percolated through the ecosystem. I don’t know if this is common knowledge or not, but his concept of antifragility is valuable. I find his snarkiness hilarious, although I’m sure it’s off-putting to some people.
Taleb uses a trichotomy of Fragile, Resilient, and Antifragile to classify various domains of life.
Image Credit: Art of Manliness
Fragile is represented by the mythic “Sword of Damocles” hanging over the head of the ruler by a thread, always ready to fall. In the knowledge management domain, I think of a kindle. It’s a wondrous device- you can highlight passages efficiently and capture them, you can take thousands of books with you literally in your pocket, sync to other cloud-based software. But it’s hostage to battery life and environmental damage from water or physical impacts, servers crashing, password issues.
Robust or Resilient is symbolized by the Phoenix, the bird of legend which is reborn in flames to show something that neither gains nor loses from stressors. For this I think about having a physical book you can carry around in your backpack in a given zombie apocalypse scenario- maybe a book on farming or something.
From Antifragile
Antifragile is represented by the Hydra, the nine-headed creature from mythology (not the fascist Marvel organization). Every time you chop off one of its heads, it grows two more back in its place—it is growing from stressors. Examples would be stressing your muscles in a workout to strengthen them (hormesis). For the knowledge domain I think of the oral tradition—people telling stories to each other verbally to transmit knowledge. You can carry those stories, take them with you anywhere—and what’s even better is that you can update them over time, add to them to improve their ability to deal with the world. The stories improve through trial and error and their practical utility to humans.
Anyway, there is a lot to his work—I am just scratching the surface here. Lots of implications for risk-taking in uncertain and volatile domains. His books are worth checking out.
Takeaways:
Add stress to foster antifragility. Cold showers, sleeping outside, hard workouts. Post-traumatic growth vs. post-traumatic stress.
The Barbell strategy. Play it safe in most areas and very risky in a small one. Example with working out—long, slow walks paired with short, intense weight training.
Tinker. Many of the modern marvels were created by accident, tinkering in a lab.
Randomness can be a powerful creative force if you use it correctly.
Take advice from those with “skin in the game.” Ensure that their opinions and actions are linked to real world consequences. Many pundits and prognosticators have no skin in the game- their recommendations are divorced from reality. Pay more attention to people who have accepted risk and responsibility for their words.
Seek the Via Negativa — The Negative Path. Latin phrase borrowed from theology. Instead of focusing your time on adding things to your life to make it better, focus first on subtracting habits, practices, things, people that fragilize you. Stop doing bad things, eating bad food, get rid of debt, lose the toxic friendships.
Increase optionality in your life. Acquire new skills, keep money in the bank. Having more options and redundancies will provide a buffer when volatility and chaos increase. Be a generalist, not a specialist (or at least have 2-3 specialties).
Here are a few summaries to whet your appetite:
Sources:
http://www.respectserendipity.com/?attachment_id=835
https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/beyond-sissy-resilience-on-becoming-antifragile/
https://fs.blog/antifragile-a-definition/