Antifragile

Ego · Post by **Ego** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 3:25 pm

http://www.economist.com/news/books-and ... tress-best
WHAT is the opposite of fragility? Though not quite right, “resilience” and “robustness” are two words that come to mind. If fragility means something that breaks under stress, its exact opposite should mean something that grows stronger under pressure. There is no word that quite captures this, says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an American essayist and scholar, so he has invented one: “antifragile”.

Felix · Post by **Felix** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 3:44 pm

Hmm ... non-newtonian liquid becomes more solid under pressure ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw

secretwealth · Post by **secretwealth** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 12:24 am

I'm going to post here what I posted on The Economist about this:
Another round of pontificating from Taleb that really means very little and brings few new ideas to the table. A contrarian investor makes some money and suddenly thinks he's Aristotle, but the problem is there is little here. It's an unnecessary neologism where he's really just talking about resilience--a word we've had for centuries and that works just fine.
I think it's somewhat admirable that Taleb wants to spend his time thinking big ideas now that he has big wealth, but he needs discipline--the sort of scholarly discipline that helps translate pontificating into real insight. He's not there yet.

Ego · Post by **Ego** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:01 am

I find a strange pleasure in discovering parallels across disciplines.
"Long periods of stability allow risks to accumulate until there is a major disaster; volatility means that things do not get too far out of kilter."
I read that sentence and though it might apply to psychology, to medicine, to economics, to sociology, to insurance, to ear wax....
Certainly not rocket science. We'll see how the book turns out. My library does not have it listed yet.

Dragline · Post by **Dragline** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:35 am

He's been posting the proofs on FB for the past year and some of them are quite interesting. Looking forward to actually reading the final product. But based on what I have read, I would not say that "resilience" is what he is talking about, nor necessarily "strength under pressure". The idea behind entropy is closer, although not really the same.
Another one that looks interesting is "Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics" due out on December 4. But I imagine that is "something completely different" in the Monty Python lexicon.

secretwealth · Post by **secretwealth** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 3:51 am

"I read that sentence and though it might apply to psychology, to medicine, to economics, to sociology, to insurance, to ear wax...."
Yeah, because it's self evident.

Post by **jacob** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:09 am

And yet, this is exactly how modern economical theory has NOT been constructed.
I think he intends to move more into risk-space which is something that modern thinking happily ignores. In that case, fragile means something that only works under a narrow cone of known outcomes. Antifragile means something that works _better_ under all the other outcomes, including the unknown ones.
An antifragile bridge is not a bridge that is overbuilt or overengineered. It's something that if destroyed will render the river passable in many ways; by clogging the river and making it walkable, by damming it up, by freezing the water, ...
Antifragile means that failure is a positive outcome.
Consider fitness. The typical solution would be to wear sweat transporting spandex, listening to motivational tapes and drinking protein drinks to become stronger as a means of conquering adversity. The antifragile solution would be to work out in crap conditions, being hungry, tired, lifting clumsy objects, being psychologically abused, ...
My understanding was that his money was made by building a tightly levered system which in most outcomes have a small negative payoff (as small as possible) but in a few outcomes have a hugely positive one. Then just sit and wait for the latter. Before 1987 that was a novel idea.

secretwealth · Post by **secretwealth** » Thu Nov 22, 2012 11:01 pm

"Antifragile means that failure is a positive outcome."
Then it's not failure.
I just see this as semantics and really not paradigmatic; a broken bridge that makes a river walkable by clogging it is a good explanation for the concept, but that's just creating a failsafe--again something people would love to do and definitely consider in a variety of fields. I can't speak for if they do this in economics, but certainly several portfolio managers try to do this through hedging.

Felix · Post by **Felix** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:07 pm

I like it that this concept of stability enters economics (finally!!!). It appears that usually stability was considered to be the normal result of free economic activity - called the ergodic hypothesis and, according to Samuelson's textbook one of the fundamental building blocks of economic theory. This basically means that you have a complex system that's stable no matter which starting conditions. From an engineering point of view this is a rather harebrained basis. Just think of Henri Poincare's 3-body-problem in Physics.
But with that markets-are-always-stable frame of mind, the focus on efficiency makes sense. Everything needs to be made more efficient. That there's usually a design trade-off between efficiency and stability in complex systems can be ignored because it's all stable anyway. We've seen how well this ergodic hypothesis worked out ...
In that sense, I like Taleb, but his ego seems to be not so antifragile ...
http://www.businessinsider.com/taleb-de ... st-2012-11
Here's the parody in question:
“Honey Boo Boo is perhaps the most antifragile person on television.”
www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/11/24/se ... clnk&gl=us

Ego · Post by **Ego** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:53 pm

At any point in the life cycle of the immortal jellyfish it has the potential to transform itself back to the polyp stage, its earliest form of life, and start over again.
Assault or stress precipitates regeneration.

Dream of Freedom · Post by **Dream of Freedom** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:02 pm

"The second labor was to go to Lerna and kill a creature with nine heads called the Hydra which lived in a swamp there. This was exceedingly hard to do, because one of the heads was immortal and the others almost as bad, inasmuch as when Hercules chopped off one, two grew up instead." Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Nassim is known for black swans. Why not hydras too? It has to be better than antifragile.

Ego · Post by **Ego** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:11 pm

Real life hydras do indeed undergo morphallaxis (tissue regeneration). Cut one hydra in three and you'll end up with three hydras.

Dragline · Post by **Dragline** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 5:08 am

I've just picked up the book today, although I've read a lot of the drafts in the past. The Hydra is actually his classical example of something antifragile. He compares it with the Sword of Damocles (fragile example) and the Phoenix (robust example).

secretwealth · Post by **secretwealth** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:01 am

If you need to use mythological characters to illustrate your point, maybe your point isn't that great to begin with.
Sorry...I still think if you talk about things that get stronger with stress, you're really just talking about things that benefit in situations that are stressful to other things.

Ego · Post by **Ego** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:26 pm

In my mind resilience means bouncing back... getting back to status quo.
RESILIENT:

(of a substance or object) Able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.

(of a person or animal) Able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.
What he is shooting for is a word that represents something that actually IMPROVES with stress.
I can't remember which philosopher said something like.... if there is no word for a thing, then that thing doesn't exist. That's why - in my mind - the idea of antifragile is so important.
Mindset: If our goal is defined by the word "resilience" then we only try to bounce back. If our goal is antifragile, we strive for something more than simply getting back to where we were.

jennypenny · Post by **jennypenny** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:41 pm

I think what you're describing is ameliorative stress.

Ego · Post by **Ego** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 4:05 pm

Ameliorate is so often misused that it has almost come to mean the misuse. People often (wrongly) say they want to ameliorate pain or they use the word is situations where they mean to lessen or to minimize.

jennypenny · Post by **jennypenny** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 4:43 pm

Don't get me started on the misuse of language! Yes, people use ameliorate when they mean palliate. The comfort thread is bothering me for the same reason. What people are describing is a life of *ease* not comfort.
I don't mind antifragile per se, but oftentimes people create a new word because they don't (or won't) take the time to find the appropriate word or phrase that already exists. Taleb doesn't fall into that group.

jzt83 · Post by **jzt83** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 4:51 pm

Well, his "reinventing words" sells lots of books.

Hoplite · Post by **Hoplite** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 5:20 pm

@jennypenny,

When misuse of a word becomes widespread, you get a quizzical post asking what people mean by "comfortable". And in the season of "Tidings of Comfort and Joy" no less (cheer). Or maybe "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (consoled). It's come to mean "Blessed are those who purchase the deluxe recliner, for they shall be comforted by the built-in deep heat massage."
I don't mean to frighten you, but this is from an editorial meeting in the reference division of a major university publisher:
"If we can't think of something different, we could always just use Roget's."
Editor: "What's that?"