Antifragile

By: Nassim Taleb - Read: May 16, 2024 - Rating: 8/10

In a world full of randomness and disorder, building things that benefit from volatility is the only way to ensure robustness. Taleb calls these things that gain from disorder antifragile.

He highlights how everything that has stood the test of time is antifragile, and shows us how to use antifragility to understand the world, improve our decision making, and build more robust systems.

He constantly makes fun of people he disagrees with throughout the book, making his writing unique and entertaining (and also very salty, likely distasteful to some).

His discussions on the barbell concept (on managing risk and reward), iatrogenics (on harmful intervention), the value of optionality, and via negativa (on improvement through removal) are particularly insightful.