Series: Incerto

Book: Fooled by randomness

Book: Black Swan - Nasim Taleb

Book: The Bed of Procrustes

Book: Antifragile - Nicolas Tale

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.