Antifragile

Things That Gain from Disorder

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book on how some things actually benefit from disorder.

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem, and in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what Taleb calls the "antifragile" is actually beyond the robust, because it benefits from shocks, uncertainty, and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. The antifragile needs disorder in order to survive and flourish.

Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is immune to prediction errors. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is everything that is both modern and complicated bound to fail? The audiobook spans innovation by trial and error, health, biology, medicine, life decisions, politics, foreign policy, urban planning, war, personal finance, and economic systems. 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 heard loud and clear.

Extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary, Antifragile provides a blueprint for how to behave - and thrive - in a world we don't understand, and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand and predict. Erudite and witty, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: What is not antifragile will surely perish.

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

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2012 Nassim Nicholas Taleb (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"[This] is the lesson of Taleb...and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable." (Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point)

"[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne." (The Wall Street Journal)

"The most prophetic voice of all.... [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher...someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone." (GQ)

Good Maybe 3.5 Stars

This guy is smart, and he has some really good ideas. All of the norms he challenges seem to be things that need to be challenged.

I found myself feeling the book was all over the place. Also, as others have noted he's very critical of certain areas almost as if he was snubbed once too many times in his career or youth. It's just not necessary in writing a book to express those annoyances, it takes effort to ignore it and see through to the good of what he's saying.

risk management as the cornerstone of societu

Taleb's view on risk is based on optionality and controlled losses which are based on his background as a trader.

I trully enjoyed they way in which he extrapolates the concept of optonality into medicine, finance and education while presenting the reader with the agency problem in each of these fields.

If you're interested in risk tranference, probability and evolution, this is the book for you.

more profound than The Black Swan, not as charming

the content of this book is nothing short of a unification theory, and a good one. the choice actor does a good job but it's not a great fit for the personality of the author.
... the voice for fat Tony, however, is perfect.
...
I'm going to reread this immediately.

Too much personal garbage

Mr. Taleb has turned my thinking around with Black Swan. The ideas are great, the principles just make sense. I think the listening time can be cut in half if there were no (or less) personal rants about certain jobs, or people. If you can filter out some of the rants, book is worth listening to.

Conflicted

Mr. Taleb is an insufferable egomaniac, but he is also greatly insightful, worth the read. A modicum of humility would allow this book to much more easily be digested.

Revelador

Articulo de manera increible muchas de las intuiciones que mis padres me habian enseñado como el esceptisismo hacia los doctores o cualquier teorizador/racionalizador de la economia. Aun asi toda mi vida pense que agregar cosas, comportamientos o ideas era lo mejor, esto tambien se refleja en la "neomania" que es la adicion de nuevas tecnologias de punta en nuestras vidas cuando en realidad la via negativa o restar a la vida resulta ser lo que le da forma a una escultura o en nuestro caso el caracter para aprovechar el caos inherente a nuestro favor.

fascinating observations of an encompassing effect

Fascinating observations of an all- encompassing effects of things that benefit from disorder that applies to really everything, with examples to explain from nature to investing.

Not for everybody

I have 10 years experience studing the author and take his word that this is the compolation of his ideas. He causes the reader, in my case the listiener, to question all that he has been taught and heard - a good idea, I believe, for those willing to question their own beliefs. He further has made me question the adequacy of my education as he appears to be able to call on the languages of the Levant and Europe and the mythology and history of each more readilty than I can with my Jesuit teachings - maybe it was just me. I thought the reader encapulated the attitude that the auther intended and as I would have expected Nero or Fat Tony to have expressed his ideas. Great book and great presentation.

A Masterpiece

While at times a very challenging book, it absolutely is worth the extra effort. Read it and gift it to others.

Love it Great value...

I Will read the complete trilogy...black swan is next for me . . . .