Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb s landmark Incerto series an investigation of opacity luck uncertainty probability human error risk and decision making in a world we don t understand The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan and The Bed of Procrustes 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 and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them many things in life benefit from stress disorder volatility and turmoil What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile is that category of 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 In Antifragile Taleb stands uncertainty on its head making it desirable even necessary and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust The resilient resists shocks and stays the same the antifragile gets better and better Furthermore 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 even 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 And throughout in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom from Roman Greek Semitic and medieval so