Antifragile

[Cain]

This is amusing:

In the aftermath of the banking crisis, I received all manner of threats, and The Wall Street Journal suggested that I "stock up on bodyguards."  I tried to tell myself no worries, stay calm, these threats were coming from disgruntled bankers; anyway, people get whacked first, then you read about it in the newspaper, not in the reverse sequence.

There follows an amusing anecdote of Taleb's weight training, and now he how now resembles something between a wrestler and a butcher and how this catches people by surprise, but I found the threats themselves interesting.  Bankers really are spoilt children, aren't they?  "Waaaaah, Taleb (among others) warned us this would happen and it did, so it's all his fault.  I wanna kill that fucker."

Little to do with the topic, but I've only restarted the book recently.

[Pæs]

 

I really like the image of The Wall Street Journal being all "BETTER WATCH YOUR BACK, BRO" as if rather than warning them, Taleb had said "That's a nice global financial system you've got there. Shame if something were to happen to it."

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Killing the messenger isn't exactly original.

Which is sort of why I'd EXPECT it from the hacks at the WSJ.

[Bu🤠ns]

I just started this book a couple days ago...I love how much counterintuitive stuff is in it.  I also realized I was picking up on the idea of antifragility when I began to see my job (in tech support) as being a situation where I benefit from the breaking down of systems.

And about 1 hour and 52 minutes into the book the following quote:

To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder

Totally clicked.  I mean I understood it intellectually, but I guess the right connections fell into place.

[Bu🤠ns]

Here's a brief discussion of how stoic philosophy relates with antifragility: http://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/14g6o9/how_does_well_does_nicholas_nassim_talebs/

[The Johnny]

If there is any good-willed pirate (yo ho ho!) that could provide a copy of this?

But it seems like an interesting concept that i can associate with:

*Bone resilience in humans: ive heard that having had a habit of running outdoors will lessen the danger of old-age fractures, because all the low impact abuse that is done on the bones will make them stronger.

*"Tools for tools..." thread, navigating the dark reseces of the internets and all things Squick WILL make one more resilient to graphically crude things. (Or would that be called desensitized?)

*Living populations of any sort, be it plants, insects, bacteria, humans, animals when exposed to duress of any type will either become resistant to said duress or die off (eventually, in a number of generations)... mutations, adaptation, or whatever biological-genetical process.

I would think the main idea would refer to how "abuse" would be an external stimulus that prompts an adaptation and/or prompts the development of a resistance/resilience to said "abuse".

Taleb sees his main challenge as mapping his ideas of "robustification" and "anti-fragility", that is, how to live and act in a world we do not understand and build robustness to black swan events. Taleb introduced the idea of the "fourth quadrant". One of its applications is in his definition of the most effective (that is, least fragile) risk management approach: what he calls the 'barbell' strategy which is based on avoiding the middle in favor of linear combination of extremes, across all domains from politics to economics to one's personal life. These are deemed more robust to estimation errors. For instance, he suggests that investing money in 'medium risk' investments is pointless because risk is difficult if not impossible to compute. His preferred strategy is to be both hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive at the same time. For example, an investor might put 80 to 90% of their money in extremely safe instruments, such as treasury bills, with the remainder going into highly risky and diversified speculative bets. An alternative suggestion is to engage in highly speculative bets that are insured against losses of more than a specified amount. He asserts that by adopting these strategies a portfolio can be "robust", that is, gain a positive exposure to black swan events while limiting losses suffered by such random events.[59] Taleb also applies a similar barbell-style approach to health and exercise. Instead of doing steady and moderate exercise daily, he suggests that it is better to do a low-effort exercise such as walking slowly most of the time, while occasionally expending extreme effort. He avers that the human body evolved to live in a random environment, with various unexpected but intense efforts and much rest.[60]

And after searching and reading this, i think im not too far off, because he speaks of the dangers of Black Swans... Black Swans come out of the blue and punch you in the face, giving you no opportunity to gradually adapt or develop a particular resilience.

[LMNO]

Taleb also applies a similar barbell-style approach to health and exercise. Instead of doing steady and moderate exercise daily, he suggests that it is better to do a low-effort exercise such as walking slowly most of the time, while occasionally expending extreme effort.

My back respectively disagrees.

[Bu🤠ns]

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_31K_MP92hURjZxTkxUTFZnMVk/edit?pli=1

Taleb just posted this textbook on his facebook feed that he's using to distill his main points from his books.

Friends, 1) Changed the name of the technical book to:
FAT TAILS AND (ANTI)FRAGILITY: Lectures on Probability, Risk, and Decisions in the Real World, which should be a completely parallel piece of work, standalone.
2) Completed the main technical points of The Black Swan, and showed IN MATHEMATICAL TERMS the limits of current probability theory and the bullshit by social scientists misusing the math of probability.
3) Realizing that there is nothing more soothing than math in airports, hotel rooms, and train stations. Somehow, psychologically, if you put the argument in precise mathematical form, you feel it is there and you don't need to make extra effort to convey it to others and avert misinterpretation: truth is robust, particularly when put in non-ambiguous form.

[Bu🤠ns]

http://www.businessinsider.com/nassim-taleb-lashes-out-on-twitter-2013-4?op=1 


Taleb twitter butthurts...lulzy

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://www.businessinsider.com/nassim-taleb-lashes-out-on-twitter-2013-4?op=1 


Taleb twitter butthurts...lulzy

He's a guy who wrote some books about how unexpected things happen sometimes.

[LMNO]

"You decide principally on fragility, not probability".

I want Elizer and Taleb to debate each other on camera.


And yes: I'm still reading this damn book. It's frustrating. Poorly written in parts, good concepts in others. And it's totally ripping off PD concepts.

[Bu🤠ns]

Ixxie and I  invited him via Twitter via HagbotCeline to check out the PD as there are similar concepts...to which the last thing he responded with was "Que est?"  to which we explained it in brief.  And that was all that happened.

[PopeSlag]

What a fantastic concept!

The closest actual example of this I can think of is the Strong Nuclear Force, but that's really a practical illusion, it too can be broken and is only "antifragile" while the universe winds down through entropy.