Antifragility Taleb Quotes & Sayings

Some libertarians use the example of Drachten, a town in the Netherlands, in which a dream experiment was conducted. All street signs were removed. The deregulation led to an increase in safety, confirming the antifragility of attention at work, how it is whetted by a sense of danger and responsibility. As a result, many German and Dutch towns have reduced the number of street signs. We saw a version of the Drachten effect in Chapter 2 in the discussion of the automation of planes, which produces the exact opposite effect than what is intended by making pilots lose alertness. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Seneca's version of that Stoicism is antifragility from fate. No downside from Lady Fortuna, plenty of upside. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth. — Johnny Rich

Social work is an opportunity for huge hearts they remember to do small things. — Kishore Bansal

I am not here to live forever, as a sick animal. Recall that the antifragility of a system comes from the mortality of its components - and I am part of that larger population called humans. I am here to die a heroic death for the sake of the collective, to produce offspring (and prepare them for life and provide for them), or eventually, books - my information, that is, my genes, the antifragile in me, should be the ones seeking immortality, not me. Then — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I'd rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I once procrastinated and kept delaying a spinal cord operation as a response to a back injury - and was completely cured of the back problem after a hiking vacation in the Alps, followed by weight-lifting sessions. These psychologists and economists want me to kill my naturalistic instinct (the inner b****t detector) that allowed me to delay the elective operation and minimize the risks - an insult to the antifragility of our bodies. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We can simplify the relationships between fragility, errors, and antifragility as follows. When you are fragile, you depend on things following the exact planned course, with as little deviation as possible - for deviations are more harmful than helpful. This is why the fragile needs to be very predictive in its approach, and, conversely, predictive systems cause fragility. When you want deviations, and you don't care about the possible dispersion of outcomes that the future can bring, since most will be helpful, you are antifragile. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If someone's really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what's new and what's truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn't that interesting. To me it is, because I'm tuned into that and that's what I like, so it's interesting to me. It's all I can do. — Stephen Malkmus

So," he said, "you really think having archangels string you up by your halo is worth saving this Harvester chick?"
"She saved the world"
Wraith shrugged. "So did I, but I don't see you offering up your holy ass to save me."
"Are you suffering unspeakable horrors at the hands of Satan?"
"No," Wraith said, "but sometimes I have to eat the hospital cafeteria food. — Larissa Ione

To see how transfer of antifragility works, consider two scenarios, in which the market does the same thing on average but following different paths. Path 1: market goes up 50 percent, then goes back down to erase all gains. Path 2: market does not move at all. Visibly Path 1, the more volatile, is more profitable to the managers, who can cash in their stock options. So the more jagged the route, the better it is for them. And of course society - here the retirees - has the exact opposite payoff since they finance bankers and chief executives. Retirees get less upside than downside. Society pays for the losses of the bankers, but gets no bonuses from them. If you don't see this transfer of antifragility as theft, you certainly have a problem. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

But fragility and antifragility are part of the current property of an object, a coffee table, a company, an industry, a country, a political system. We can detect fragility, see it, even in many cases measure it, or at least measure comparative fragility with a small error while comparisons of risk have been (so far) unreliable. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The worst problem of modernity lies in the malignant transfer of fragility and antifragility from one party to the other, with one getting the benefits, the other (unwittingly) getting the harm, with such transfer facilitated by the growing wedge between the ethical and the legal. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Surround yourself with a bunch of like-minded people, and you'll soak up their habits like a starved sponge. Fat people with fat friends care less about their weight. — Vir Das

Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The hidden benefit of antifragility is that you can guess worse than random and still end up outperforming. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

And we can almost always detect antifragility (and fragility) using a simple test of asymmetry: anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad
at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

No, Tolya, your gifts lie elewhere," Sturmhond said soothingly. "Mostly in the celebrated fields of killing and maiming. — Leigh Bardugo

Proclaim not all thou knowest, all thou owest, all thou hast, nor all thou canst. — Benjamin Franklin

Alas, it has been hard for me to fit these ideas about fragility and antifragility within the current U.S. political discourse - that beastly two-fossil system. 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. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

He saw the article ... which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public - an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary. — Ayn Rand

She grounds me. She obsesses me. She fuels me. — Katy Evans

My dream - the solution - is that we would have a National Entrepreneur Day, with the following message: Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are at the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb