Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The acclaimed author of the influential bestseller The Black Swan, Nicholas Nassim Taleb takes a next big step with a deceptively simple concept: the "antifragile." Like the Greek hydra that grows two heads for each one it loses, people, systems, and institutions that are antifragile not only withstand shocks, they benefit from them. In a modern world dominated by chaos and uncertainty, Antifragile is a revolutionary vision from one of the most subversive and important thinkers of our time. Praise for Nicholas Nassim Taleb "[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, author of The Tipping Point "[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne."--The Wall Street Journal "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"--

"Examples of Antifragility: When you stress your body by lifting a big weight, your body gets stronger. New York has the best restaurants in the world because particular restaurants are always going bust, making the aggregate stronger and stronger, or antifragile. Evolution is antifragile. Certain business and investment strategies are antifragile. Older things tend to be more antifragile than newer ones - because they've been exposed to more Black Swans"--

This is one of those books that is great because it introduces a new way of talking about what has always existed. You will either agree with the claims and conclusions and find yourself able to put words to things you likely already believed or, if you disagree, clarify your own perspective by creating a defense against a new and intriguing attack.

There are some good points made in the book, but overall I cannot recommend. The author spends entirely too many pages on things he doesn't like (which is just about everything). A short list: doctors, businessmen, politicians, economists, psychologists, scientists, lawyers, ebooks, anything invented since the dark ages, and so on. He very much comes across as both a Luddite and a curmudgeon.

To summarize the book: The author has found that there is no word for the opposite of ‘fragile', so he cleverly coins the word ‘anti-fragile'. He then mocks everyone past and present who has not thought of this themselves or or applied to their lives and work. Einstein.. what an idiot- he didn't even know what anti-fragile was! He is quick to label others as charlatans, hacks,etc. He does not live up to his own impossible standards.

Most of his argument is semantics. A line repeated throughout the book: ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. I do not believe he was successful in describing what anti-fragile was. No attempt is made to apply his theory to current events or the future, only to the all to convenient past.

He recalls with glee telling a student who asks what books he should be reading (none written in the last 100 years certainly!). I will end this by saying that while i don't believe his premise that there are no modern worthy books, his is one you can afford to skip.

This one had interesting points, but as someone who focuses around systems and order, it was hard for me to imagine structuring systems in this way. The examples were interesting – things like the human body and vaccines as an example of a system that grows stronger after trauma.