Antifragile

Things That Gain from Disorder

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and The Bed of Procrustes.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.

Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.

In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.

Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear.

Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.

Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it.

Includes a bonus PDF of supplemental charts and graphics

Please note that that bleeps in the audio are intentional and are as written by the author. No material is censored, and no audio content is missing.

Praise for Antifragile

“Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist

“A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek

“Revelatory . . . [Taleb] pulls the reader along with the logic of a Socrates.”—Chicago Tribune

“Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides . . . I will have to read it again. And again.”—Matt Ridley, The Wall Street Journal

“Trenchant and persuasive . . . Taleb’s insatiable polymathic curiosity knows no bounds. . . . You finish the book feeling braver and uplifted.”—New Statesman

“Antifragility isn’t just sound economic and political doctrine. It’s also the key to a good life.”—Fortune

“At once thought-provoking and brilliant.”—Los Angeles Times

Critic reviews

“Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist

“A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek

“Revelatory . . . [Taleb] pulls the reader along with the logic of a Socrates.”—Chicago Tribune

“Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides . . . I will have to read it again. And again.”—Matt Ridley, The Wall Street Journal

“Trenchant and persuasive . . . Taleb’s insatiable polymathic curiosity knows no bounds. . . . You finish the book feeling braver and uplifted.”—New Statesman

“Antifragility isn’t just sound economic and political doctrine. It’s also the key to a good life.”—Fortune

“At once thought-provoking and brilliant.”—Los Angeles Times

“[Taleb] writes as if he were the illegitimate spawn of David Hume and Rev. Bayes, with some DNA mixed in from Norbert Weiner and Laurence Sterne. . . . Taleb is writing original stuff—not only within the management space but for readers of any literature—and . . . you will learn more about more things from this book and be challenged in more ways than by any other book you have read this year. Trust me on this.”—Harvard Business Review

“By far my favorite book among several good ones published in 2012. In addition to being an enjoyable and interesting read, Taleb’s new book advances general understanding of how different systems operate, the great variation in how they respond to unthinkables, and how to make them more adaptable and agile. His systemic insights extend very well to company-specific operational issues—from ensuring that mistakes provide a learning process to the importance of ensuring sufficient transparency to the myriad of specific risk issues.”—Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, Bloomberg

Good book, Dull narration

The narrator of "Black Swan" is the best for Taleb's books. This one easily gets me bored on prolonged listening. Should have a hard copy.

Arrogantly offputting.... if he wasn't so smart.

Where does Antifragile rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Unique perspective with real utility. Top quartile.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Applying a scientific and intelligent rationale for traditionalism.

What about Joe Ochman’s performance did you like?

Read with believably conceited indignation which would have been off-putting were it not earned and justified.

If you could give Antifragile a new subtitle, what would it be?

"I spit in your general direction"

Any additional comments?

As a physician and leader, I'm drawn to innovative ideas that can guide our work and lives in a healthier and more fulfilling manner. Taleb's principles provide a compelling counter to our tendency to over-engineer and "fragilize" our lives and businesses. Resonant.

Must Read

Any additional comments?

This is a great book and I would recommend it to anyone. My only problem was the censoring of words throughout the work. The spectacular inappropriateness of this just amazing. This is not a young adult novel nor is audible a publicly open platform. The idea that audible would modify what is essentially a scientific and philosophical work is absolutely repugnant. This was the only issue I had with this audio book. If you can find an uncensored version of the work, I would highly recommend buying it instead.

Dense Books, Not People

This book is dense. I cannot wait to listen to it a second and third time because I know the revelations will keep coming. I am a newbie when it comes to Taleb's writing. I have not read or listened to his other writings. I found this book not only satisfying, but provocative. And it lives up to Talib's description as a book that is not an addendum to previous writing. I highly recommend a listen!

Drunk Obnoxious Nassim Speaks Truth

It was a struggle to finish. Taleb is erudite and obnoxious, insightful and inspiring almost, while being rude and almost petty in the same sentence. Tangents galore it's a bit of a master craft to be able to hang on for the ride. That ssid, it's an absolute must revisit. Let's be clear, Nassim is very intoxicated by his own insight and it shows on every page, but besides for the self aggrandizing and faux humility it is indeed a robust and affective drink.

Great Book

NNT does it again Great commentary and life lessons with just the right amount of jabs and sarcasm to keep your interest

Makes you think

As usual Taleb makes one think differently. Highly reccomend to anyone interested in avoiding mental traps

awesome book

highly recommended, great twist and ideas, getting to understand what anti fragile is and how it's shown in ie daily lives and choices.

Likely the most thought provoking book I've read

Contrary to others, I do think Nassim is as smart as he thinks he is. It took me a couple of chapters to shift from initially thinking he was an inconsistent, bashful, narcissist, to appreciating his honesty, independent mind, consistency in beliefs, pro social nature, and praise of others he respects. I was extremely close to stopping reading but am very glad I didn't.

Its amazing that he's able to present his theories in various mediums - logic, mathematics, narratives, semantics, metaphors - which really allows you to fully grasp his ideas and realize they are robust from all angles. I experienced many 'aha' moments listening to him, as there is something that just feels intuitively right about his concepts, in contrast to opinions of other authors which I find can be a crap shoot and has not been subject to as much deep scrutiny.

I love how fragility can be determined by looking at the symmetry of a histogram, or by looking at a graph of two variables and observing concavity, or by identifying whether options are present to benefit from uncertainty or not, or even through intuition in identifying a feeling of rigidity and a Procrustean bed. All of these things seem unconnected at first glance but they connect beautifully. Many of his ideas revolve around the idea that we think we are smarter than we are, think we can predict catastrophe, think we can understand all relationships in complex systems, think we can do better than mother nature, and we cut off the legs of nature's variability to create pseudo-certainty. This results in a fassad of robustness, but fragility to catastrophe and massive downside is the ultimate foundation. We must resort to 'via negativa', getting rid of the things we do that are in contrast to nature and don't pass scrutiny by the burden of evidence. While we can prove things don't work, we have a hard time proving adding things will work, as absence of evidence doesn't equate with evidence of absence. However, our society commonly incorrectly gives the burden of evidence to the via negativa, such as in having to prove how the overuse of fossil fuels does cause harm. We think we can do better than tinkering in innovation, while this is what mother nature does, and almost all successful pharma and therapeutics have come from trial and error and empirical findings, such as Viagra which was intended as a heart medication. We intervene in life when the benefits to intervention are low, when we have mild symptoms, and their are hidden risks to intervention called 'iatrogenics.' On the flip side, when we are in times of distress, have a serious condition, or in the event of a black swan, we don't intervene enough and don't leverage all the tools we have. We think we can find a theory for everything that empirically seems to work, but that theory changes annually, it provides no benefit in application, and we trick ourselves into thinking 'taught birds how to fly,' while humans developed the plane through trial error and not through application of a theory developed by academia. Suckers think our knowledge must be constrained to what we have a theory or semantic for, even though our language will always be much inferior to truth, and the word for blue wasn't used until the 6th century. Countries get rich through resources, and poor money into education thinking it will bring them riches. An most importantly, we are in a world where there is more noise than ever around us, as the media, academics, bankers, consultants, bureaucrats, and many influencers don't have skin in the game; if their bridge falls, it will not be on them.

This book will truly effect the way I live my life and how I make important decisions. I'd recommend also getting a hard copy as there are a host of useful visuals that can help improve your understanding of the concepts. I look forward to returning to his other works after a small break, but only when it feels right, and only his oldest books, as Nassim would say.

Taleb's books are the ones I recommend the most

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has an abrasive personality which comes through very strongly in his writing. A lot of people will be turned off by that, but if you can get past that and really listen to his ideas you will be rewarded with well though out ideas that are presented in an easy to understand way. His books should not be considered light reading, you will need to spend time thinking about them to digest the ideas! I love his books and look forward to each new one. You may not agree with everything he says but his books will get your juices flowing and get you thinking. What more can you ask for from a book?