gnoffprince's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Is a fascinating book, that I'd rather much higher if the author didn't make themselves so irritating. I'm glad I read it and feel I've learnt from it, but I definitely wouldn't want to have to meet the author.
marisbest2's review against another edition
3.0
Every once in a while I come across an author who has lots of really smart things to say but can't get out of their own way and just write the book. Taleb is one of those authors. The concept of anti-fragility is really smart. The applications in the book make sense. The arguments are often persuasive. And then suddenly we're going down some hole about the Harvard-Soviet State or a rant against some big banker and it all gets lost.
dunguyen's review
5.0
Another awesome book by Nassim Taleb. This is the fourth book of his that I have read in a row as I am going through all of his works. And to me this is perhaps the most important one of them. In Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, Taleb describes how randomness, risk and uncertainty occur more often with disastrous consequences. All of this leads to his concept of antifragility which in hindsight seems like the most simple concept but of course isn't so when you don't know it.
Taleb describes how things are either fragile in which they are damaged from stress, robust in which things withstand stress and lastly antifragile which is the ability to become stronger from stress. This Taleb describes applies to all arenas of life and applies in different places and at different levels. The book is quite amazing for packing in all sorts of concepts that have been described in the two other books mentioned and pack them into this framework of sorts, or rather a philosophy or way of seeing the systems that are around us.
I must say that I don't fully understand all of it but feel like I understand the concepts well enough. Like with The Black Swan I think this is one of those books you gain more from with another reading or two! Highly recommend!
Taleb describes how things are either fragile in which they are damaged from stress, robust in which things withstand stress and lastly antifragile which is the ability to become stronger from stress. This Taleb describes applies to all arenas of life and applies in different places and at different levels. The book is quite amazing for packing in all sorts of concepts that have been described in the two other books mentioned and pack them into this framework of sorts, or rather a philosophy or way of seeing the systems that are around us.
I must say that I don't fully understand all of it but feel like I understand the concepts well enough. Like with The Black Swan I think this is one of those books you gain more from with another reading or two! Highly recommend!
parkershepherd's review
1.0
Although the general concept of antifragility is interesting, the book didn't feel entirely coherent. The author kept making little side-notes that clouded the point, and there was too much description for the items being talked about. I didn't end up finishing the book this time around
duffypratt's review
3.0
I started this book after Christmas with a great deal of excitement, put it down for reasons I can't remember, and then read the whole thing over the last three days. So while it looks like it took me months to get through this, it actually only took a few days. Taleb several times makes a similar point about averages. For example, suppose you were told by a nursing home that your grandma would be kept nicely in a room where the average temperature was a pleasant 70 degrees. What they don't tell you is that, half the time it will be at zero degrees, and the other half at 140 degrees. Sometimes knowing the average isn't particularly relevant.
I liked this book. I've like all of Taleb's books, but I thought this one was less focused than its predecessors. Worse, having popularized the phrase "Black Swan," which now seems to have fallen into the venacular, Taleb seems to have taken a scholastic turn and fallen in love with his own jargon and neologisms. Quite a bit of the book takes illustrative stories from classic sources, and then restates the point of the story in Taleb's own language, using neologisms like "anti-fragile", "negative convexity", and "optionality." Having made the Taleb restatement, he then asserts that we truly understand the point of these stories. For me, I like the stories and, for the most part, the lessons he draws from the stories, but I could really do without the jargon he seems bent on creating.
Take "anti-fragile." Taleb insists that there is no word for the opposite of fragile. A thing is fragile when it breaks under stress. Ask most people for the opposite and they might suggest "strong" or "robust." But the strong simply has a higher breaking point. The true opposite actually changes and becomes more resistant to breaking when it is placed under stress. And Taleb says that there is no word for this, so he invents "anti-fragile." How about "adaptable." Something adapts when it makes changes so that it can better respond to stresses. That strikes me as being very much what he is going for with "anti-fragile." Indeed, Taleb's great system of anti-fragility is evolution, but the story of evolution is the story of adaptation.
United by this central theme of adaptability, the book was a series of essays making forays into different fields to either illustrate or digress from the main topic. Most of it I enjoyed, and I agree with much of what Taleb has to say, even (or perhaps especially) when he flouts current conventional wisdom. He has a long discussion on the mistaken idea that technology tends to flow from scientific knowledge. The growth of technology actually tended to happen alongside, and apart from, the growth of scientific knowledge. This was a point that was central to a class I took on the History of Science and Technology in my freshman year at college. Taleb insists that the University, to establish its own importance, has hidden this basic aspect of history. Funny, then, that I should have learned it in a university, and as a lowly freshman. (In Taleb's defense, whenever I have tried to make this point with people in conversation, they tend to look at me cross-eyed: of course technology comes from science, how could it be otherswise. At that point I tended to tell them to read Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.)
The last troubling point I will mention here is Taleb's love for telling us how the ancients had it right. He will support one of his ideas by some quote from an ancient text, often an obscure one. Here, I suspect Taleb is cherry picking. He's definitely better read in the ancients than I am, and I'm not going to try to come up with examples to support my point. But I know that people are very adept at supporting whatever point they want to by going back to the Bible. Both the abolitionists and the slaveowners knew for certain that the Bible was on their side. And here, I think if Taleb wanted to, he could fairly easily come up with some ancient author who has a saying that would support the denial of whatever point he is trying to make. Voila! The ancients had it right! This strikes me as very funny, because it is exactly the kind of thing that Taleb railed against in Fooled by Randomness.
What this book did present, in a slightly clearer fashion than The Black Swan, is a practical approach that one might take in response to radical uncertainty. And like all of his books, it immersed me in a way of thinking that I find quite refreshing (despite the annoying tendencies toward scholasticism and self-congratulation). My guess is that Taleb is a guy I would find extremely unpleasant in person (though perhaps not, he does seem to favor Mini Coopers), but I'm grateful for his books and will almost certainly read anything that follows.
I liked this book. I've like all of Taleb's books, but I thought this one was less focused than its predecessors. Worse, having popularized the phrase "Black Swan," which now seems to have fallen into the venacular, Taleb seems to have taken a scholastic turn and fallen in love with his own jargon and neologisms. Quite a bit of the book takes illustrative stories from classic sources, and then restates the point of the story in Taleb's own language, using neologisms like "anti-fragile", "negative convexity", and "optionality." Having made the Taleb restatement, he then asserts that we truly understand the point of these stories. For me, I like the stories and, for the most part, the lessons he draws from the stories, but I could really do without the jargon he seems bent on creating.
Take "anti-fragile." Taleb insists that there is no word for the opposite of fragile. A thing is fragile when it breaks under stress. Ask most people for the opposite and they might suggest "strong" or "robust." But the strong simply has a higher breaking point. The true opposite actually changes and becomes more resistant to breaking when it is placed under stress. And Taleb says that there is no word for this, so he invents "anti-fragile." How about "adaptable." Something adapts when it makes changes so that it can better respond to stresses. That strikes me as being very much what he is going for with "anti-fragile." Indeed, Taleb's great system of anti-fragility is evolution, but the story of evolution is the story of adaptation.
United by this central theme of adaptability, the book was a series of essays making forays into different fields to either illustrate or digress from the main topic. Most of it I enjoyed, and I agree with much of what Taleb has to say, even (or perhaps especially) when he flouts current conventional wisdom. He has a long discussion on the mistaken idea that technology tends to flow from scientific knowledge. The growth of technology actually tended to happen alongside, and apart from, the growth of scientific knowledge. This was a point that was central to a class I took on the History of Science and Technology in my freshman year at college. Taleb insists that the University, to establish its own importance, has hidden this basic aspect of history. Funny, then, that I should have learned it in a university, and as a lowly freshman. (In Taleb's defense, whenever I have tried to make this point with people in conversation, they tend to look at me cross-eyed: of course technology comes from science, how could it be otherswise. At that point I tended to tell them to read Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.)
The last troubling point I will mention here is Taleb's love for telling us how the ancients had it right. He will support one of his ideas by some quote from an ancient text, often an obscure one. Here, I suspect Taleb is cherry picking. He's definitely better read in the ancients than I am, and I'm not going to try to come up with examples to support my point. But I know that people are very adept at supporting whatever point they want to by going back to the Bible. Both the abolitionists and the slaveowners knew for certain that the Bible was on their side. And here, I think if Taleb wanted to, he could fairly easily come up with some ancient author who has a saying that would support the denial of whatever point he is trying to make. Voila! The ancients had it right! This strikes me as very funny, because it is exactly the kind of thing that Taleb railed against in Fooled by Randomness.
What this book did present, in a slightly clearer fashion than The Black Swan, is a practical approach that one might take in response to radical uncertainty. And like all of his books, it immersed me in a way of thinking that I find quite refreshing (despite the annoying tendencies toward scholasticism and self-congratulation). My guess is that Taleb is a guy I would find extremely unpleasant in person (though perhaps not, he does seem to favor Mini Coopers), but I'm grateful for his books and will almost certainly read anything that follows.
khorrocks's review
1.0
I think this was my first one star review!
Ugh. I'm so glad to be done with this book. I'm trying to give books a chance, and read to the last page, but if I actually read this book (as opposed to listening to the audiobook) I would have dropped it after the second page. That said, I grew so annoyed with the author that I often tuned him out. The most annoying thing about the book was the author's flippant and mocking tone about things that he despises. He used made-up words like fragilistas and antifragility schmantifragility that grated on my nerves. (The book's title Antifragile, wasn't much better). He also took very strong stances against very vague and broad subjects, like modernity, evidence, and nerds, while applauding things like ancients, and a strange man called Fat Tony. I think my biggest frustration is that he had some interesting points, and I was previously very optimistic about the premise, but his negative tone, lack of research, and overall use of derisive terminology was too much. Also, I feel like he was throwing around jargon (real and invented) to make his claims sound intelligent, but it came across as high-minded and repetitive: heuristic, Procrustean, bifurcating, autodidacts, hormetic, iatrogenics, touristification, doxastic, via negativa, Thalesian, Aristotelian, neomania, mediocristan, convexity...
Here's a few quotes:
"Wimp."
"Sissy."
"The author doesn't care about the haters."
"The knowledge-based economy is typically ignorant."
It must be nice to be a comfortable author, who can only gain publicity from negative responses, meanwhile he insults those who spend their careers serving others or trying to make the world a better place, like doctors, scientists, and architects. I may have took offense at that last one. I'm not sure why so many people have a positive review of his writing.
Ugh. I'm so glad to be done with this book. I'm trying to give books a chance, and read to the last page, but if I actually read this book (as opposed to listening to the audiobook) I would have dropped it after the second page. That said, I grew so annoyed with the author that I often tuned him out. The most annoying thing about the book was the author's flippant and mocking tone about things that he despises. He used made-up words like fragilistas and antifragility schmantifragility that grated on my nerves. (The book's title Antifragile, wasn't much better). He also took very strong stances against very vague and broad subjects, like modernity, evidence, and nerds, while applauding things like ancients, and a strange man called Fat Tony. I think my biggest frustration is that he had some interesting points, and I was previously very optimistic about the premise, but his negative tone, lack of research, and overall use of derisive terminology was too much. Also, I feel like he was throwing around jargon (real and invented) to make his claims sound intelligent, but it came across as high-minded and repetitive: heuristic, Procrustean, bifurcating, autodidacts, hormetic, iatrogenics, touristification, doxastic, via negativa, Thalesian, Aristotelian, neomania, mediocristan, convexity...
Here's a few quotes:
"Wimp."
"Sissy."
"The author doesn't care about the haters."
"The knowledge-based economy is typically ignorant."
It must be nice to be a comfortable author, who can only gain publicity from negative responses, meanwhile he insults those who spend their careers serving others or trying to make the world a better place, like doctors, scientists, and architects. I may have took offense at that last one. I'm not sure why so many people have a positive review of his writing.
joshmaher's review
5.0
Wow, what an amazing book. Nassim evolves his thinking and explains that this book is the current culmination of his thoughts around risk and fragility. The book deals in incredibly complex topics yet is explained in a very uncomplicated manner. The information is conveyed in a series of stories that include insights from the great philosophers (both current and ancient). Nassim builds a framework around how to think about the insights from those philosophers as well as the many other sources of knowledge in the world.
mattintx's review
1.0
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.
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.