A review by duffypratt
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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.