Series: Incerto Book: Fooled by randomness Book: Black Swan - Nasim Taleb Book: The Bed of Procrustes Book: Antifragile - Nicolas Taleb Book: Skin in the game

Model: Extremistan vs Mediocistan Model: convex vs concave Model: skin in the game Heuristic: acceleration of harm Model: Black Swan events Model: Lindy Effect

Stay out of the financial markets if you don’t gave good tail protection Scale makes companies fragile

  • scale = fragile
  • centralisation = fragile

Heuristic: companies with fluctuating revenue/income are less fragile Heuristic: private companies are less fragile Model: silver rule (aka reverse golden rule) Quote: philosophers should be known for one thing and one thing only Heuristic: whatever annoys book reviewers is a good thing Quote: if you see a fraud and don’t say fraud, you are a fraud Model: book knowledge vs other knowledge Model: layers of anti-fragility Model: what kills me makes other stronger Model: expert problems Model: wealth causes education Model: reducing variation makes things fragile and more extreme Quote: forest fire Model: organic vs mechanic

  • Feedback from environment through stressor

Quote: welcome to Extremistan

  • gain 8 million in 8 years, lost in 8 seconds

Anecdote: olive presses Model: options Model: the extended disorder family

  • randomness, time, uncertainty,…

Model: prediction vs optionality for risk-management Quote: Antifragile is harmed with lack of stressors Model: killing architects when the building collapses Quote: fragility at the expense of others Model: comfort causes aging Quote: the higher you build your barricades the stronger we become Quote: only those who don’t care about their reputation have a good one Model: growth = stressor + recovery Model: non-linear Model: artificial aging Quote: complex worlds don’t have (knowable) causality Quote: organisms only reach equilibrium in death Model: intervention with addition vs subtraction Model: acute vs chronic stress Quote: use it or lose it

  • Machines vs organics

Model: tourist vs flaneur

  • Touristification

Model: minority rule Model: path dependence (past dependence)

  • Things seem statically but when viewed dynamically is completely different
  • Eg. Iron pants after washing vs before washing
  • Always look in sequence
  • Economist say “loss aversion is irrational”, no its completely rational, if you go bust you’ll never be able to get in the game again

Quote: Never take risk of ruin

Scale matters, Group!individuals Time, sequence matters

There is a lot of uncertainty, 1 way to go about it

Quote: the more uncertainty there is in a system, the more we know how to act

Heuristics of antifragility

  1. Barbell (walking + sprinting> , conservative + democrats > labor, safe + risky > medium, fasting + affluence> stable)

How to eliminate ’too big to fail' If a business going bankrupt becomes a national risk, everyone gets a fixed civil servant income. If it doesn’t they can do and earn what they want

Antifragile - at cost of the the weak dying Over-protect the weak Help the risk-takers take more risk Ignore the middle

Gas distribution was fragile, what would robust and antifragile be? Robust = redundancy Antifragile = optionality / survive and learn You can’t be anti-fragile at the gas level, you need to be anti-fragile on the transportation level. More types of transportation.