Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Gary Chan
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Abstract
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This work introduces the concept of antifragility—systems that gain from disorder—and contrasts it with fragility and risk management. Through various examples, it argues that measuring antifragility is more achievable than predicting rare events. The paper discusses the implications of antifragility in fields ranging from finance to social structures, emphasizing the importance of adopting strategies that enhance resilience and survival, while critiquing conventional risk assessment methods.
Key takeaways
- Intellectuals tend to focus on negative responses from randomness (fragility) rather than the positive ones (antifragility).
- Fragility implies more to lose than to gain, equals more downside than upside, equals (unfavorable) asymmetry and Antifragility implies more to gain than to lose, equals more upside than downside, equals (favorable) asymmetry You are antifragile for a source of volatility if potential gains exceed potential losses (and vice versa).
- So take for now that a barbell strategy with respect to randomness results in achieving antifragility thanks to the mitigation of fragility, the clipping of downside risks of harm-reduced pain from adverse events, while keeping the benefits of potential gains.
- In fact younger humans are antifragile to thermal variations, up to a point, benefiting from some variability, then losing such antifragility with age (or disuse, as I suspect that thermal comfort ages people and makes them fragile).
- We saw how, thanks to the misunderstanding of antifragility (and asymmetry or convexity), some classes of people use hidden options and harm the collective without anyone realizing.
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