Book Review – Antifragile
Image: Antifragile by Len Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
Synopsis: Len's Star Rating: 5 out of 10. A book that expands upon concepts found in Dr. Nassim Taleb’s previous books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD / 7.21.2022; No. 91
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Star Rating – 5 out of 10
Rating guide: 1 = horrible, 5 = average and 10 = wow
Author
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
About the author
Nassim Taleb, PhD, is a mathematical statistician, former options trader and risk analyst, and author of several influential books on the effects of randomness, probability, and uncertainty in financial markets and life in general.
General description
Antifragile is a book that expands on concepts that Dr. Nassim Taleb introduced in his previous books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. In this book, he delves into different areas of life that demonstrate characteristics of antifragility, which is the concept of getting stronger because of stress and volatility. While Dr. Taleb does not provide a specific roadmap for antifragility, he shares many guidelines and examples from history, medicine, economics, and political systems. The author categorized his chapters into different sections titled:
The Antifragile: An Introduction
Modernity and the Denial of Antifragility
A Nonpredictive View of the World
Optionality, Technology, and the Intelligence of Antifragility
The Nonlinear and the Nonlinear
Via Negativa
The Ethics of Fragility and Antifragility
Unique and most important aspects
In Antifragile, Dr. Nassim Taleb reengages with many of the ideas that he introduced in his previous books. He spends more time providing examples of antifragility and what contributes to fragility than how a person can become antifragile. His ideas on the barbell strategy and optionality are some of the most useful ideas for individual application.
I was concerned about Dr. Taleb’s dismissive tone toward mental illness. As a pediatric psychiatrist, I am committed to preventing Black Swan events of childhood suicide. Therefore, I disagreed with Dr. Taleb’s categorization of “the psychiatric fragilista who medicates children to ‘improve’ their intellectual and emotional life.” Later in his book, he stated, “But when you medicate a child for an imagined or invented psychiatric disease, say, ADHD or depression, instead of letting him out of the cage, the long-term harm is largely unaccounted for.” I lowered my rating of this book based on Dr. Taleb’s incorrect and stigmatizing opinions regarding mental illness.
Important features of this book include:
The definition of antifragile
Expanding on the barbell strategy
Examples of iatrogenic harm and “touristification”
Warnings about harmful top-down policies the author termed “Soviet-Harvard delusions”
The concept of optionality
The phenomenon of post-traumatic growth
The idea of the philosopher’s stone
The directionality of how tinkering leads to theory and how economic growth and wealth lead to education
The importance of agency being tied to having “skin in the game”
Best quotes
“The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
“Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it. For instance, many wreck their reputations merely by trying to defend them.”
“Switzerland is the most antifragile place on the planet; it benefits from shocks that take place in the rest of the world.”
“One of life’s packages: no stability without volatility.”
“Optionality will take us many places, but at the core, an option is what makes you antifragile and allows you to benefit from the positive side of uncertainty, without a corresponding serious harm from the negative side.”
“…the option is a substitute for knowledge…”
Who would enjoy this book?
Readers who enjoyed Dr. Nassim Taleb’s previous books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan and are interested in the concept and characteristics of antifragility would likely enjoy Antifragile.
Who would not enjoy this book?
Readers who would be offended by incorrect and stigmatizing opinions about mental illness are unlikely to enjoy Antifragile.
Conclusion
Antifragile is a book that expands upon concepts found in Dr. Nassim Taleb’s previous books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.