# Antifragile ## Metadata * Author: [Nassim Nicholas Taleb](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B0083DJWGO * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083DJWGO * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO) ## Highlights anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile. Deprivation of Antifragility — location: [354](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=354) ^ref-65160 supervised vs unsupervised --- antifragility-at-the-cost-of-fragility-of-others is — location: [368](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=368) ^ref-24218 --- After more than twenty years as a transactional trader and businessman in what I called the “strange profession,” I tried what one calls an academic career. And I have something to report—actually that was the driver behind this idea of antifragility in life and the dichotomy between the natural and the alienation of the unnatural. Commerce is fun, thrilling, lively, and natural; academia as currently professionalized is none of these. And for those who think that academia is “quieter” and an emotionally relaxing transition after the volatile and risk-taking business life, a surprise: when in action, new problems and scares emerge every day to displace and eliminate the previous day’s headaches, resentments, and conflicts. — location: [563](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=563) ^ref-64828 --- Nature in 2003 by Gerard Karsenty and colleagues. — location: [1173](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=1173) ^ref-13410 --- Further, my characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on. These types often consider themselves the “victims” of some large plot, a bad boss, or bad weather. — location: [1455](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=1455) ^ref-37194 --- by P. W. Anderson in the title of his paper “More Is Different.” And what scientists involved in complexity — location: [4790](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=4790) ^ref-56186 --- Jared Diamond, always ahead of others, figured out such vulnerability in a paper called “Why Cats Have Nine Lives.” — location: [4847](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=4847) ^ref-34148 --- Someone with a linear payoff needs to be right more than 50 percent of the time. Someone with a convex payoff, much less. The hidden benefit of antifragility is that you can guess worse than random and still end up outperforming. Here lies the power of optionality—your function of something is very convex, so you can be wrong and still do fine—the more uncertainty, the better. — location: [5165](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=5165) ^ref-10891 deck with singke combo vs deck with no delendency. why zoo is better --- Finally, consider this modernized version in a saying from Steve Jobs: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — location: [5272](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=5272) ^ref-13063 --- have often followed what I call Bergson’s razor: “A philosopher should be known for one single idea, not more” — location: [5332](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=5332) ^ref-1124 --- he who does not have a past has no future — location: [5540](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=5540) ^ref-45238 --- How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand — location: [5654](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=5654) ^ref-40938 --- David Freedman showed (very convincingly) with a coauthor that the link everyone is obsessing about between salt and blood pressure has no statistical basis. It may exist for some hypertensive people, but it is more likely the exception than the rule. — location: [6166](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=6166) ^ref-25932 --- cow and other herbivores are subjected to much less randomness than the lion in their food intake; they eat steadily but need to work extremely hard in order to metabolize all these nutrients, spending several hours a day just eating. Not to count the boredom of standing there eating salads. The lion, on the other hand, needs to rely on more luck; it succeeds in a small percentage of the kills, less than 20 percent, but when it eats, it gets in a quick and easy way all these nutrients produced thanks to very hard and boring work by the prey. So take the following principles derived from the random structure of the environment: when we are herbivores, we eat steadily; but when we are predators we eat more randomly. — location: [6357](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=6357) ^ref-56313 --- The great historian Paul Veyne has recently shown that it is a big myth that gladiators were forced labor. Most were volunteers who wanted the chance to become heroes by risking their lives and winning, or, when failing, to show in front of the largest crowd in the world how they were able to die honorably, without cowering—when — location: [6535](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0083DJWGO&location=6535) ^ref-48687 ---