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Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder Hardcover – 27 Nov 2012

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)

196 customer reviews

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.

Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.

In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.

What's more, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call "efficient" not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems and medicine, drawing on modern street wisdom and ancient sources.

Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.

Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: the antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to problems of uncertainty, probability, and knowledge and has led three careers around this focus, as a businessman-trader, a philosophical essayist, and an academic researcher. Although he now spends most of his time working in intense seclusion in his study, in the manner of independent scholars, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute. His main subject matter is "decision making under opacity," that is, a map and a protocol on how we should live in a world we don't understand.

His books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan have been published in thirty-three languages.
Taleb believes that prizes, honorary degrees, awards, and ceremonialism debase knowledge by turning it into a spectator sport.

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Product details

Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane (27 Nov. 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1846141567
ISBN-13: 978-1846141560
Product Dimensions: 16.2 x 3.7 x 24 cm
Average Customer Review: 196 customer reviews
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 406,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22709 in Psychology & Psychiatry
- #867 in Economic Theory & Philosophy
- #3406 in Business & Economic History

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Review

Wall Street's principal dissident (Malcolm Gladwell)

This] is the lesson of Taleb . . . and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable (Malcolm Gladwell)

The hottest thinker in the world (Bryan Appleyard)

A guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot (John Cornwell Sunday Times)

A superhero of the mind (Boyd Tonkin)

The most prophetic voice of all . . . Taleb is a genuinely significant philosopher . . . someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone (GQ)

Changed my view of how the world works (Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laureate)

Imagine someone with the erudition of Pico de la Mirandola, the skepticism of Montaigne, solid mathematical training, a restless globetrotter, polyglot, enjoyer of fine wines, specialist of financial derivatives, irrepressible reader, and irascible to the point of readily slapping a disciple (La Tribune)

Antifragile broadens and extends the logic he used in The Black Swan and applies it to everyday living ... [it] may well capture a quality that you have long aspired to without having known quite what it is. I saw the world afresh (Ed Smith The Times)

Taleb takes on everything from the mistakes of modern architecture to the dangers of meddlesome doctors and how overrated formal education is. . . . An ambitious and thought-provoking read . . . highly entertaining (Economist)

About the Author

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an uncompromizing no-nonsense thinker for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's School of Engineering. He is the author of the 4-volume INCERTO (Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and The Bed of Procrustes). Taleb refuses all awards and honours as they debase knowledge by turning it into competitive sports.

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196 customer reviews

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I loved Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan

18 February 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I loved Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan, but this follow up is disappointing. There's two reasons for this. the first is that Taleb seems to have explained his key thoughts in those earlier books, and there's little new material here. The second is that Taleb suffers from what I would call 'Harry Potter Syndrome', in that as he's become more popular editors seem more reluctant to take a scalpel to his work (actually he repeatedly voices his disdain for editors). The result of this is 500 pages of rambling thoughts, and it's hard to get to the end of it let alone draw any conclusions. I feel bad criticising Taleb as his earlier books made a huge impression on me, but this just isn't up the same standards. Hopefully his publishers will lay down the law next time and insist on a more active editor.

31 people found this helpful

Comment

interrupted by "wow I never thought of it like that before"

25 May 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

It's hard to know where to stop when talking about this book. Some books are described as life changing, but are not. This one really is. I will never look at any aspect of my life again in quite the same way. I wish I'd read it years ago. I'm now buying it for my (adult) children. It can become a struggle to read at times but if it does, put it down and come back to it. Having said that most of the book is compulsive and humorous reading, interrupted by "wow I never thought of it like that before". I would however recommend reading "The Black Swan" first as I think you might miss the point of this book, at least initially, if you don't.

18 people found this helpful

Comment

The author is certainly highly erudite and makes some excellent points but does so in a relatively wayward fashion

8 April 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

If you have read any of the previous Taleb books, such as The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable or Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets you are most likely not in for a surprise. The author is certainly highly erudite and makes some excellent points but does so in a relatively blunt and confrontational manner (explaining the number of reviews giving alternatively 1 or 5 stars).

In the current book he discusses the concept of anti-fragility, i.e. a feature of systems that benefit, rather than get harmed by unpredictability. There are lots of good points made and I certainly buy into the concept. We do tend to be fooled by randomness (pun intended) and do tend to discount rare events - much to our detriment.

Where the success of the book will depend on the disposition of the reader much more, is it's typically Taleb style. He is confrontational and that to an extent where quite some readers may be put off. While this does not bother me generally, I find that he actually belabored the point somewhat too much and that the book would definitely benefit from an abridgement to something like 300 pages. While I did not find any part of the book completely replaceable, the point does get a bit too repetitive after a while.

If you want to get much of the content in a less confrontational, and slimmer volume, I recommend you try A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits Of Disorder first. If, however you have enjoyed his previous work, do go for it by all means - he is much the same (perhaps even a tad more extreme) as always and the content is certainly worthwhile.

8 people found this helpful

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This book is a game changer

6 August 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

There is so much in this book you will be enjoying eureka moments over and over.

What as the author says, are things your instincts have known, but your rational side may well have Said, “show me the evidence”; no evidence of existence is not evidence of no existence will seem obvious after his explanation and he joins the dots for you in areas of Science, Medicine and Fiannce.

By the end the simple truth of his “Triad”: Fragility, Volatility and Optionality will be clearer to you.

What surprises me more, is how I feel about rationalists and science now (lecturing birds on how to fly). I was a hardcore card holder for both and though a physicist I still sign up to the benefits of science, I am a persuaded by the arguments in this book.

You must read this. I would six star it if I could as it’s a game changer

2 people found this helpful

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Great idea, book itself a little too long

4 February 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Review courtesy of www.subtleillumination.com

What’s the opposite of fragility? Most people say robustness, resilience, or strength. Most people, says Taleb, are wrong. Fragility is to be weakened by uncertainty or volatility, while resilience is to be unaffected by volatility. What we need is something strengthened by volatility and change – something antifragile.

That, in a nutshell, is Antifragile. Like all the best ideas, it’s a simple idea with immediate, important, and interesting consequences. In particular, Taleb argues that the modern world, in its quest for efficiency and optimization, has ignored the effects of volatility. As a result, shocks (Black Swans) have catastrophic consequences. When one hits, however, we ask the wrong question. We demand to know why we failed to predict the housing bubble or disease outbreak, instead of asking ourselves why we built a system that is tremendously vulnerable to such shocks.

Instead of eliminating centralization and vulnerability in our systems, like big corporations or big bureaucracies, however, we keep trying to predict the future, an endeavor doomed to failure. Shocks, as Taleb has argued in other books, are rare, and so attempting to predict them is impossible because they happen so rarely – we never have enough data points to draw conclusions. (For the economists reading, he believes in fat tails). Rather than trying to predict the future, we should build systems that can evolve and adapt to it.

The idea is a fairly simple one, but not I think something most of us have thought about. Once you've got it, the rest of the book doesn't add much, which is always the danger of having one great idea. It can also sometimes be a bit technical for a general audience. The idea gets 5 starts, possibly 6: the book 4 for being too long.

6 people found this helpful

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