All of Taleb’s books build off of each other around uncertain events.  I’d read “fooled by randomness” & “skin in the game” before this but haven’t read “black swan”.  

🫣👀

https://tiagofaleiro.medium.com/antifragile-by-taleb-the-most-overrated-book-i-ever-read-c48613989f55

🫣👀  https://tiagofaleiro.medium.com/antifragile-by-taleb-the-most-overrated-book-i-ever-read-c48613989f55

I’ve heard of Taleb and this book specifically for ages, but every time I saw any content from him, he looked like such a gigantic ass that…

Antifragile by Taleb: The Most Overrated Book I Ever Read

Sam Mendoza

Which one?  Do you recommend it? I’m interested in the topic.

Yes, you make a great point. It’s interesting because our group read two books and talked about them at the same get together, and the other was a book on mindfulness. We made the association.

Is this not an extremely clunky way to describe mindfulness?
 I don't get how the premise (haven't read) differs from this age old concept besides having new title. You avoid stress, you become less resilient. You endure stress, and you become more resilient. You respond to stress, you add significance to it. You acknowledge stress without responding, and you reduce its significance. Does that about sum it up?

Is this not an extremely clunky way to describe mindfulness?  I don't get how the premise (haven't read) differs from this age old concept besides having new title. You avoid stress, you become less resilient. You endure stress, and you become more resilient. You respond to stress, you add significance to it. You acknowledge stress without responding, and you reduce its significance. Does that about sum it up?

Jerome Cody

Will

Thanks for the thoughtful nformative response @Alex .  You’ve converted me.  Will read it! @D J 😬

Alex

@Jerome Cody based on my reading, it’s not really focused on mindfulness, though i think the mindful reader would get a lot out of it. 

There are lots of cool quotes like DJ wrote above which give flavor to the book and a sense of Taleb’s philosophical leanings. 

That said, I think he’s best in two areas: 
1) when he’s looking at how volatility research, mostly from the world of finance, can offer useful heuristics to other fields such as environmentalism, personal health, and urban planning - endless examples in the book. He probably takes this too far to make his research seem like it’s at the center of everything, but at a minimum it’s a fresh perspective  
2) his application of his research to ethics at the end of the book was the most interesting part on my second read through, which was very unexpected. He makes a case that a lot of society’s ills, and corruption in general, can be attributed to the mismatch of risk and reward; certain positions in society, namely bankers, politicians, CEOs, academics, and even journalists, enjoy free call options when taking big bets at the expense of the many (usually taxpayers or common people) who pay if bets are wrong. 

Taleb goes on to suggest several policies that would work towards removing these misalignments: for example, “too big to fail” companies are explicitly stated as such by the government, and CEOs of these companies must either choose to downsize to a size where they are no longer a systemic risk to the economy, or accept a pay cap at the salary level of a senior government employee. Regardless of if you agree with his views, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get picked up by populists on both sides of the US policy spectrum.

@Jerome Cody based on my reading, it’s not really focused on mindfulness, though i think the mindful reader would get a lot out of it.   There are lots of cool quotes like DJ wrote above which give flavor to the book and a sense of Taleb’s philosophical leanings.   That said, I think he’s best in two areas:  1) when he’s looking at how volatility research, mostly from the world of finance, can offer useful heuristics to other fields such as environmentalism, personal health, and urban planning - endless examples in the book. He probably takes this too far to make his research seem like it’s at the center of everything, but at a minimum it’s a fresh perspective   2) his application of his research to ethics at the end of the book was the most interesting part on my second read through, which was very unexpected. He makes a case that a lot of society’s ills, and corruption in general, can be attributed to the mismatch of risk and reward; certain positions in society, namely bankers, politicians, CEOs, academics, and even journalists, enjoy free call options when taking big bets at the expense of the many (usually taxpayers or common people) who pay if bets are wrong.   Taleb goes on to suggest several policies that would work towards removing these misalignments: for example, “too big to fail” companies are explicitly stated as such by the government, and CEOs of these companies must either choose to downsize to a size where they are no longer a systemic risk to the economy, or accept a pay cap at the salary level of a senior government employee. Regardless of if you agree with his views, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get picked up by populists on both sides of the US policy spectrum.

Jimmy Wu took a screenshot of this post and discussion

Jimmy Wu

Great question, you should read 😉. how do you get millions of people to do that all together? Imo that's what this book is about.

Taleb would call that "robust," midway between fragile and antifragile. To him, resilience is one thing (he calls anyone aiming for resilience a sissy), and profiting from stress is another. To be antifragile is not to become immune to stress, but to actually seek it and gain from it (If you aren't improved by stress and chaos, you're dead weight). 

The book helped me be attentive to identifying things that are susceptible to fragility and things that are anti-fragile - as well as things that are robust.  Once understood how to categorize financial models, philosophies, countries, people, physical objects, careers, you can get a holistic idea of what to avoid and what to seek out.

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Great question, you should read 😉. how do you get millions of people to do that all together? Imo that's what this book is about.  Taleb would call that "robust," midway between fragile and antifragile. To him, resilience is one thing (he calls anyone aiming for resilience a sissy), and profiting from stress is another. To be antifragile is not to become immune to stress, but to actually seek it and gain from it (If you aren't improved by stress and chaos, you're dead weight).   The book helped me be attentive to identifying things that are susceptible to fragility and things that are anti-fragile - as well as things that are robust.  Once understood how to categorize financial models, philosophies, countries, people, physical objects, careers, you can get a holistic idea of what to avoid and what to seek out.

D J

A group of likeminded people in The Book Club 📚 are talking about this.