## Metadata - Author: [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]] - Full Title:: Antifragile - Category:: #📚Books - Read date:: [[2023-02-02]] ## Highlights > nonpredictive decision making ([Location 450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=450)) > Fragility can be measured; risk is not measurable ([Location 453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=453)) > complex systems are weakened, even killed, when deprived of stressors. ([Location 465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=465)) > While in the past people of rank or status were those and only those who took risks, who had the downside for their actions, and heroes were those who did so for the sake of others, today the exact reverse is taking place. ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=477)) > Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the fragility of others. ([Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=482)) > I have made the claim that most of history comes from Black Swan events, while we worry about fine-tuning our understanding of the ordinary, and hence develop models, theories, or representations that cannot possibly track them ([Location 486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=486)) > Life is more, a lot more, labyrinthine than shown in our memory—our minds are in the business of turning history into something smooth and linear, which makes us underestimate randomness. But when we see it, we fear it and overreact. ([Location 490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=490)) > it is making things a lot more unpredictable. Now for reasons that have to do with the increase of the artificial, ([Location 500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=500)) > understanding it makes us less intellectually fearful in accepting the role of these events as necessary for history, technology, knowledge, everything. ([Location 509](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=509)) > robustness can’t just be it: you need perfect robustness for a crack not to end up crashing the system. ([Location 514](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=514)) > Technology is the result of antifragility, exploited by risk-takers in the form of tinkering and trial and error, with nerd-driven design confined to the backstage. ([Location 520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=520)) > the medical fragilista who overintervenes in denying the body’s natural ability to heal and gives you medications with potentially very severe side effects; ([Location 557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=557)) - Note: wtf... homeopatía then? > we didn’t get where we are today thanks to policy makers—but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect. ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=565)) > Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession. ([Location 571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=571)) > one’s personal experience gives the stamp of authenticity and sincerity of opinion. ([Location 636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=636)) > Benoît Mandelbrot read the galleys of The Black Swan, a book dedicated to him, he called me and quietly said: “In what language should I say ‘good luck’ to you?” ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=658)) - Tags: [[orange]] > A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. ([Location 662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=662)) > Antifragility is desirable in general, but not always, as there are cases in which antifragility will be costly, extremely so. Further, it is hard to consider robustness as always desirable—to quote Nietzsche, one can die from being immortal. ([Location 766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=766)) > The sword of Damocles represents the side effect of power and success: you cannot rise and rule without facing this continuous danger—someone out there will be actively working to topple you. ([Location 826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=826)) > (respect for the weak being, after intellectual courage, the second most attractive quality to this author), ([Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=862)) > Hormesis, a word coined by pharmacologists, is when a small dose of a harmful substance is actually beneficial for the organism, acting as medicine. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=885)) > the larger point is that we can now see that depriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=905)) > Humans somehow fail to recognize situations outside the contexts in which they usually learn about them. ([Location 910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=910)) > is not part of the accepted way of thinking about success, economic growth, or innovation that these may result only from overcompensation against stressors. ([Location 930](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=930)) > The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates! ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=952)) - Note: source > it is a well-known trick that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office. ([Location 974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=974)) > “maximum lifts” type of training and swore by it, as he found it the most effective and least time-consuming. This method consisted of short episodes in the gym in which one focused solely on improving one’s past maximum in a single ([Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1038)) > So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is “overrated,” with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute “underrated” for the opposite effect). ([Location 1100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1100)) > It is quite perplexing that those from whom we have benefited the most aren’t those who have tried to help us (say with “advice”) but rather those who have actively tried—but eventually failed—to harm us. ([Location 1151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1151)) > the complex world, the notion of “cause” itself is suspect; ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1196)) > Humans tend to do better with acute than with chronic stressors, ([Location 1228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1228)) > Such a stressor would be certainly better than the mild but continuous stress of a boss, mortgage, tax problems, guilt over procrastinating with one’s tax return, exam pressures, ([Location 1232](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1232)) > harmful a low-level stressor without recovery can ([Location 1235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1235)) > Measures that aim at reducing variability and swings in the lives of children are also reducing variability and differences within our said to be Great Culturally Globalized Society. ([Location 1287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1287)) > the antifragility of some comes necessarily at the expense of the fragility of others. In a system, the sacrifices of some units—fragile units, that is, or people—are often necessary for the well-being of other units or the whole. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1345)) > Black Swan Management 101: nature (and nature-like systems) likes diversity between organisms rather than diversity within an immortal organism, ([Location 1404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1404)) - Note: Idea similar en [[📖 The Righteous Mind|La Mente de los justos]] > Good systems such as airlines are set up to have small errors, independent from each other—or, in effect, negatively correlated to each other, since mistakes lower the odds of future mistakes. ([Location 1471](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1471)) > We need to eliminate the second type of error—the one that produces contagion—in our construction of an ideal socioeconomic system. ([Location 1474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1474)) > He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. ([Location 1497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1497)) > For the economy to be antifragile and undergo what is called evolution, every single individual business must necessarily be fragile, exposed to breaking—evolution needs organisms (or their genes) to die when supplanted by others, in order to achieve improvement, or to avoid reproduction when they are not as fit as someone else. ([Location 1503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1503)) > colonies, I am certain that individual businessmen are not overly interested in hara-kiri for the greater good of the economy; they are therefore necessarily concerned in seeking antifragility ([Location 1510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1510)) > Natural and naturelike systems want some overconfidence on the part of individual economic agents, i.e., the overestimation of their chances of success and underestimation of the risks of failure in their businesses, provided their failure does not impact others. In other words, they want local, but not global, overconfidence. ([Location 1518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1518)) > In other words, some class of rash, even suicidal, risk taking is healthy for the economy—under the condition that not all people take the same risks and that these risks remain small and localized. ([Location 1522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1522)) > Now, by disrupting the model, as we will see, with bailouts, governments typically favor a certain class of firms that are large enough to require being saved in order to avoid contagion to other business. This is the opposite of healthy risk-taking; it is transferring fragility from the collective to the unfit. ([Location 1523](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1523)) > other words, the trial can just be a ruthless exam that kills those who fail. All we may be witnessing is that transfer of fragility (rather, antifragility) from the individual to the system that I discussed earlier. Let me present it in a different way. The surviving cohort, clearly, is stronger than the initial one—but not quite the individuals, since the weaker ones died. Someone paid a price for the system to improve. ([Location 1537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1537)) > There is something like a switch in us that kills the individual in favor of the collective when people engage in communal dances, mass riots, or war. ([Location 1548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1548)) - Note: [[📖 The Righteous Mind|La mente de los justos]] > I detest the ruthlessness of selection, the inexorable disloyalty of Mother Nature. I detest the notion of improvement thanks to harm to others. ([Location 1557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1557)) > We saw the trade-off between the interests of the collective and those of the individual. An economy cannot survive without breaking individual eggs; protection is harmful, and constraining the forces of evolution to benefit individuals does not seem required. But we can shield individuals from starvation, provide some social protection. And give them respect. ([Location 1578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1578)) > But there is a difference between the benign, heroic type of risk taking that is beneficial to others, in the antifragile case, and the nastier modern type related to negative Black Swans, such as the overconfidence of “scientists” computing the risks of harm from the Fukushima ([Location 1594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1594)) > Employees’ risks are hidden. ([Location 1638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1638)) > Natural randomness presents itself more like George’s income: smaller role for very large shocks, but daily variability. Further, such variability helps improve the system (hence the antifragility). A week with declining earnings for a taxi driver or a prostitute provides information concerning the environment ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1650)) > Eye contact with one’s peers changes one’s behavior. But for a desk-grounded office leech, a number is a just a number. ([Location 1721](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1721)) > By influencing one single decision or regulation in Brussels, a single lobbyist gets a large bang. It is a much larger payoff (at low cost) than with municipalities, which would require armies of lobbyists trying to convince people ([Location 1737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1737)) > mistaking absence of evidence (of harm) for evidence of absence, a mistake that we will see tends to prevail in intellectual circles and ([Location 1796](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1796)) > “We people of Aleppo prefer war to prison.” ([Location 1834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1834)) > Economic life, too, seems to prefer war to prison. ([Location 1835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1835)) > In spite of a civil war that decimated the population, causing an acute brain drain and setting wealth back by several decades, in addition to every possible form of chaos that rocked the place, today Lebanon has a considerably higher standard of living—between three and six times the wealth of Syria. Nor did the point escape Machiavelli. ([Location 1838](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1838)) > little bit of agitation gives resources to souls and what makes the species prosper isn’t peace, but freedom.” ([Location 1842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1842)) > combination of empire (for some affairs) and semi-independent regions (left alone for their own business) provides more stability than the middle: the centralized nation-state with flags and discrete borders. ([Location 1854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1854)) > Then of course the contagious creation of nation-states in the late nineteenth century led to what we saw with the two world wars and their sequels: more than sixty million (and possibly eighty million) victims. ([Location 1869](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1869)) > This is no different from a switch to “winner take all” effects in industry, the domination of rare events. A collection of statelings is similar to the restaurant business we discussed earlier: volatile, but you never have a generalized restaurant crisis—unlike, say, the banking business. Why? Because it is composed of a lot of independent and competing small units that do not individually threaten the system and make it jump from one state to another. Randomness is distributed rather than concentrated. ([Location 1871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1871)) > When we look at risks in Extremistan, we don’t look at evidence (evidence comes too late), we look at potential damage: never has the world been more prone to more damage; never. ([Location 1879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1879)) > Small forest fires periodically cleanse the system of the most flammable material, so this does not have the opportunity to accumulate. Systematically preventing forest fires from taking place “to be safe” makes the big one much worse. For similar reasons, stability is not good for the economy: ([Location 1911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1911)) > firms become very weak during long periods of steady prosperity devoid of setbacks, and hidden vulnerabilities accumulate silently under the surface—so ([Location 1913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1913)) > simulated annealing to bring more general optimal solutions to problems and situations, solutions that only randomness can deliver. ([Location 1943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1943)) > Alessandro Pluchino and his colleagues showed how adding a certain number of randomly selected politicians to the process can improve the functioning of the parliamentary system. ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1961)) > People are shocked and outraged when I tell them that absence of political instability, even war, lets explosive material and tendencies accumulate under the surface. ([Location 1981](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=1981)) > One of life’s packages: no stability without volatility. ([Location 2025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2025)) > the separation of “work” and “leisure” (though the two would look identical to someone from a wiser era), ([Location 2038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2038)) > 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. ([Location 2099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2099)) > “principal-agent problem,” which emerges when one party (the agent) has personal interests that are divorced from those of the one using his services (the principal). ([Location 2101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2101)) > Perhaps the idea behind capitalism is an inverse-iatrogenic effect, the unintended-but-not-so-unintended consequences: the system facilitates the conversion of selfish aims (or, to be correct, not necessarily benevolent ones) at the individual level into beneficial results for the collective. ([Location 2130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2130)) > During the cold war, the University of Chicago was promoting laissez-faire theories, while the University of Moscow taught the exact opposite—but their respective physics departments were in convergence, if not total agreement. This is the reason I put social science theories in the left column of the Triad, as something superfragile for real-world decisions and unusable for risk analyses. ([Location 2158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2158)) > Just as a little bit of fire here and there gets rid of the flammable material in a forest, a little bit of harm here and there in an economy weeds out the vulnerable firms early enough to allow them to “fail early” (so they can start again) and minimize the long-term damage to the system. ([Location 2175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2175)) > Incidentally, those who do too much somewhere do too little elsewhere—and editing provides a quite fitting example. Over my writing career I’ve noticed that those who overedit tend to miss the real typos (and vice versa). ([Location 2184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2184)) > As we will see, interventionism depletes mental and economic resources; ([Location 2188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2188)) > Indeed, as in medicine, we tend to over-intervene in areas with minimal benefits (and large risks) while under-intervening in areas in which intervention is necessary, like emergencies. So the message here is in favor of staunch intervention in some areas, such as ecology or to limit the economic distortions and moral hazard caused by large corporations. ([Location 2201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2201)) > But I also buy the opposite argument that regulating street signs does not seem to reduce risks; drivers become more placid. Experiments show that alertness is weakened when one relinquishes control to the system (again, lack of overcompensation). Motorists need the stressors and tension coming from the feeling of danger to feed their attention and risk controls, rather than some external regulator—fewer pedestrians die jaywalking than using regulated crossings. ([Location 2211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2211)) > Most of the time, the Democratic side of the U.S. spectrum favors hyper-intervention, unconditional regulation, and large government, while the Republican side loves large corporations, unconditional deregulation, and militarism—both are the same to me here. ([Location 2222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2222)) > It’s much easier to sell “Look what I did for you” than “Look what I avoided for you.” ([Location 2233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2233)) > Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, ([Location 2253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2253)) > deferring the writing of a passage until my body tells me that I am ready for it, I may be using a very potent naturalistic filter. I write only if I feel like it and only on a subject I feel like writing about—and the reader is no fool. ([Location 2256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2256)) > Since procrastination is a message from our natural willpower via low motivation, the cure is changing the environment, or one’s profession, by selecting one in which one does not have to fight one’s impulses. Few can grasp the logical consequence that, instead, one should lead a life in which procrastination is good, as a naturalistic-risk-based form of decision making. ([Location 2270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2270)) - Note: Esto no se si hay evidencia de ello... > Philosophers refer to an error called the naturalistic fallacy, implying that what is natural is not necessarily morally right—something I subscribe to, as we saw in Chapter ([Location 2278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2278)) > access to data increases intervention, ([Location 2309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2309)) > The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get ([Location 2322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2322)) > why anyone who listens to news (except when very, very significant events take place) is one step below sucker. ([Location 2330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2330)) > Consider the iatrogenics of newspapers. They need to fill their pages every day with a set of news items—particularly ([Location 2331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2331)) > Newspapers should be of two-line length on some days, two hundred pages on others—in proportion with the intensity of the signal. But of course they want to make money and need to sell us junk food. And junk food is iatrogenic. ([Location 2332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2332)) > In medicine, we are discovering the healing powers of fasting, ([Location 2336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2336)) - Note: Esto no esta muy demostrado > Just as we are not likely to mistake a bear for a stone (but likely to mistake a stone for a bear), it is almost impossible for someone rational, with a clear, uninfected mind, someone who is not drowning in data, to mistake a vital signal, one that matters for his survival, for noise—unless he is overanxious, oversensitive, and [[neurosis|neurotic]], hence distracted and confused by other messages. ([Location 2342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2342)) > Political and economic “tail events” are unpredictable, and their probabilities are not scientifically measurable. No matter how many dollars are spent on research, predicting revolutions is not the same as counting cards; humans will never be able to turn politics and economics into the tractable randomness of blackjack. ([Location 2437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2437)) > There are ample empirical findings to the effect that providing someone with a random numerical forecast increases his risk taking, even if the person knows the projections are random. ([Location 2461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2461)) > you do not need to predict much, unlike those who are in the opposite situation, namely, in debt. ([Location 2469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2469)) > “why did we build something so fragile to these types of events?” Not ([Location 2482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2482)) > we cannot afford to rely on the rationalistic elimination of greed and other human defects that fragilize society. ([Location 2484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2484)) - Note: Bueniiiiiisimo > the more intelligent (and practical) action is to make the world greed-proof, or even hopefully make society benefit from the greed and other perceived defects of the human race. ([Location 2486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2486)) > Social, economic, and cultural life lie in the Black Swan domain, physical life much less so. ([Location 2501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2501)) > Winner-take-all effects are worsening: success for an author, a company, an idea, a musician, an athlete is planetary, or nothing. These worsen predictability since almost everything in socioeconomic life now is dominated by Black Swans. ([Location 2513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2513)) > The sea gets deeper as you go further into it, according to a Venetian proverb. ([Location 2577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2577)) > People are cruel and unfair in the way they confer recognition, so it is best to stay out of that game. ([Location 2618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2618)) > A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion—in other words, the amount of downside he is exposed ([Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2631)) > Stoicism, which advanced a certain indifference to fate. ([Location 2673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2673)) > “He is in debt, whether he borrowed from another person or from fortune.” ([Location 2705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2705)) > Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence ([Location 2721](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2721)) > When you become rich, the pain of losing your fortune exceeds the emotional gain of getting additional wealth, ([Location 2722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2722)) > An intelligent life is all about such emotional positioning to eliminate the sting of harm, which as we saw is done by mentally writing off belongings so one does not feel any pain from losses. The volatility of the world no longer affects you negatively. ([Location 2748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2748)) > The first step toward antifragility consists in first decreasing downside, rather than increasing upside; that ([Location 2795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2795)) > Mitigating fragility is not an option but a requirement. It may sound obvious but the point seems to be missed. ([Location 2797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2797)) > Fragility has a ratchetlike property, the irreversibility of damage. What matters is the route taken, the order of events, not just the destination—what scientists call a path-dependent property. ([Location 2799](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2799)) > Under path dependence, one can no longer separate growth in the economy from risks of recession, financial returns from risks of terminal losses, and “efficiency” from danger of accident. ([Location 2811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2811)) > If a gambler has a risk of terminal blowup (losing back everything), the “potential returns” of his strategy are totally inconsequential. ([Location 2812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2812)) > In other words, if something is fragile, its risk of breaking makes anything you do to improve it or make it “efficient” inconsequential unless you first reduce that risk of breaking. ([Location 2815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2815)) > all solutions to uncertainty are in the form of barbells. ([Location 2825](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2825)) > I initially used the image of the barbell to describe a dual attitude of playing it safe in some areas (robust to negative Black Swans) and taking a lot of small risks in others (open to positive Black Swans), ([Location 2828](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2828)) > That is extreme risk aversion on one side and extreme risk loving on the other, rather than just the “medium” or the beastly “moderate” risk attitude that in fact is a sucker game (because medium risks can be subjected to huge measurement errors). ([Location 2830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2830)) > But the barbell also results, because of its construction, in the reduction of downside risk—the elimination of the risk of ruin. ([Location 2832](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2832)) > Someone with 100 percent in so-called “medium” risk securities has a risk of total ruin from the miscomputation of risks. ([Location 2836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2836)) > This may sound like a platitude, but it is not: just observe how people tend to provide for the best and hope that the worst will take care of itself. ([Location 2865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2865)) > We have ample evidence that people are averse to small losses, but not so much toward very large Black Swan risks (which they underestimate), since they tend to insure for small probable losses, but not large infrequent ones. Exactly backwards. ([Location 2866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2866)) > And professions can be serial: something very safe, then something speculative. ([Location 2887](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2887)) > Or, if I have to work, I find it preferable (and less painful) to work intensely for very short hours, then do nothing for the rest of the time (assuming doing nothing is really doing nothing), until I recover completely and look forward to a repetition, ([Location 2892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2892)) > In social policy, it consists in protecting the very weak and letting the strong do their job, rather than helping the middle class to consolidate its privileges, thus blocking evolution and bringing all manner of economic problems that tend to hurt the poor the most. ([Location 2904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2904)) > The reader may remember the exercise regimen of Chapter 2, which consists in going for the maximum weight one can lift, then nothing, compared to other alternatives that entail less intense but very long hours in the gym. This, supplemented with effortless long walks, constitutes an exercise barbell. ([Location 2911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2911)) > Trashy gossip magazines and classics or sophisticated works; never middlebrow stuff. ([Location 2915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2915)) > If you dislike someone, leave him alone or eliminate him; don’t attack him verbally. ([Location 2916](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2916)) > The legendary investor Ray Dalio has a rule for someone making speculative bets: “Make sure that the probability of the unacceptable (i.e., the risk of ruin) is nil.” Such a rule gets one straight to the barbell.† ([Location 2921](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2921)) > So just as Stoicism is the domestication, not the elimination, of emotions, so is the barbell a domestication, not the elimination, of uncertainty. ([Location 2927](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2927)) > The rational flâneur is someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision at every step to revise his schedule, so he can imbibe things based on new information, ([Location 2947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2947)) > Now a warning: the opportunism of the flâneur is great in life and business—but not in personal life and matters that involve others. The opposite of opportunism in human relations is loyalty, a noble sentiment—but one that needs to be invested in the right places, that is, in human relations and moral commitments. ([Location 2952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2952)) > The error of thinking you know exactly where you are going and assuming that you know today what your preferences will be tomorrow has an associated one. It is the illusion of thinking that others, too, know where they are going, and that they would tell you what they want if you just asked them. ([Location 2954](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2954)) > Never ask people what they want, or where they want to go, or where they think they should go, or, worse, what they think they will desire tomorrow. ([Location 2956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2956)) > The strength of the computer entrepreneur [[Steve Jobs]] was precisely in distrusting market research and focus groups—those ([Location 2957](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2957)) > intelligence makes you discount antifragility and ignore the power of optionality. ([Location 2980](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2980)) > Beyond a certain level of opulence and independence, gents tend to be less and less personable and their conversation less and less interesting. ([Location 2992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=2992)) > It is an option, “the right but not the obligation” for the buyer and, of course, “the obligation but not the right” for the other party, called the seller. Thales had the right—but not the obligation—to use the olive presses in case there would be a surge in demand; the other party had the obligation, not the right. Thales paid a small price for that privilege, with a limited loss and large possible outcome. That was the very first option on record. The option is an agent of antifragility. ([Location 3000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3000)) > You are only harmed if you repeatedly pay too much for the option. ([Location 3008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3008)) > Financial options may be expensive because people know they are options and someone is selling them and charging a price—but most interesting options are free, or at the worst, cheap. ([Location 3010](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3010)) > edge from optionality is in the larger payoff when you are right, which makes it unnecessary to be right too often. ([Location 3013](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3013)) - Note: Tiene sentido comprar loteria¿? > So consider the asymmetry. You benefit from lower rents, but are not hurt by higher ones. How? Because here again, you have an option, not an obligation. ([Location 3049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3049)) > you are better off having a high percentage of people disliking you and your message (even intensely), combined with a low percentage of extremely loyal and enthusiastic supporters. ([Location 3071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3071)) > with no inequality at all, luxury goods sellers would not survive. ([Location 3076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3076)) > No one at present dares to state the obvious: growth in society may not come from raising the average the Asian way, but from increasing the number of people in the “tails,” that small, very small number of risk takers crazy enough to have ideas of their own, those endowed with that very rare ability called imagination, that rarer quality called courage, and who make things happen. ([Location 3088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3088)) > Option = asymmetry + rationality ([Location 3127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3127)) > Risk taking ain’t gambling, and optionality ain’t lottery tickets. ([Location 3163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3163)) > technology is only trivial retrospectively—not ([Location 3202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3202)) > (We said that the intellectual society rewards “difficult” derivations, compared to practice in which there is no penalty for simplicity.) ([Location 3204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3204)) > The key is that the significant can only be revealed through practice. ([Location 3241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3241)) - Note: "A diseñar se aprende diseñandl" > asymmetry effects of trial and error) supersedes intelligence. ([Location 3247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3247)) > the “translational gap,” the time difference between formal discovery and first implementation, ([Location 3253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3253)) > It partakes of the chronic lack of heroism and cowardice on the part of professionals: few want to jeopardize their jobs and reputation for the sake of change. ([Location 3270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3270)) > His Black Swan is a Spanish frigate called Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, ([Location 3281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3281)) > We are very likely to believe that skills and ideas that we actually acquired by antifragile doing, or that came naturally to us (from our innate biological instinct), came from books, ideas, and reasoning. ([Location 3315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3315)) > Nobody discusses the possibility of the birds’ not needing lectures—and nobody has any incentive to look at the number of birds that fly without such help from the great scientific establishment. ([Location 3341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3341)) > The lecturing-birds-how-to-fly effect * is an example of epiphenomenal belief: we see a high degree of academic research in countries that are wealthy and developed, leading us to think uncritically that research is the generator of wealth. ([Location 3368](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3368)) > we cannot change humans as easily as we can build greed-proof systems, and nobody thinks of simple solutions. ([Location 3386](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3386)) > Lant Pritchet, then a World Bank economist) shows no evidence that raising the general level of education raises income at the level of a country. ([Location 3462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3462)) > wonder why people don’t make the epiphenomenal association between the wealth of a country and something “bad,” say, decadence, and infer that decadence, or some other disease of wealth like a high suicide rate, also generates wealth.) I am not saying that for an individual, education is ([Location 3476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3476)) > Education stabilizes the income of families across generations. ([Location 3479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3479)) > But these effects don’t count for countries. ([Location 3481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3481)) > Further, let me remind the reader that scholarship and organized education are not the same. ([Location 3493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3493)) > The same with artisans: the quality lies in their product, not their conversation—in ([Location 3516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3516)) > People with too much smoke and complicated tricks and methods in their brains start missing elementary, very elementary things. ([Location 3580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3580)) > He claims to never hire economists and finance people, just physicists and mathematicians, those involved in pattern recognition accessing the internal logic of things, without theorizing. Nor does he ever listen to economists or read their reports. ([Location 3594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3594)) > Rubinstein refuses to claim that his knowledge of theoretical matters can be translated—by him—into anything directly practical. To him, economics is like a fable—a ([Location 3598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3598)) > Economics is not a science and should not be there to advise policy. ([Location 3601](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=3601)) > A dual strategy, a combination of two extremes, one safe and one speculative, deemed more robust than a “monomodal” strategy; often a necessary condition for antifragility. For instance, in biological systems, the equivalent of marrying an accountant and having an occasional fling with a rock star; for a writer, getting a stable sinecure and writing without the pressures of the market during spare time. Even trial and error are a form of barbell. ([Location 7088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=7088)) > Warren Buffett that he tries to invest in businesses that are “so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” ([Location 9243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B009K6DKTS&location=9243))