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)

Changes your way of seeing the world

If you could sum up Antifragile in three words, what would they be?

Innovative, fascinating, life-changing

What other book might you compare Antifragile to and why?

Freakonomics - because they both challenge our view of the world and show how what we think might be true, frequently isn't.

What does Joe Ochman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His style is unusual although well matched to the book. I enjoyed it and as with the best Audible books, the experience of listening to the book has far more impact than reading the book.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

That chaos breeds flexibility.

Any additional comments?

I listened to this book 4-5 months ago and I find myself still thinking about it. There is a lot of very profound insight here and it is a book that I will re-listen to.

Stimulating

Nassim Taleb eloquently and thoroughly communicates one of life's most fundamental, yet obscured, principles. An intellectual adventure!

I may re-read this book once per year for the next 2 or 3 decades, or so...

changed my life

Superbly written. Excellent narration. The content is both interesting and accessible. I can't wait to dig into Taleb's other books now.

Don't confuse conspiracy for incompetence,

What if, instead of adding things to compensate for the woes of the world, we subtract.

Taleb makes a strong argument for... Well, makes several strong arguments. From via negativa to a bit of dietary advice that's more eloquently put here than in any fad diet book, there's all sorts of observations and arguments that can change your life once you embrace what they mean. Do you understand optionality, and the importance of shocks to systems? Do you benefit more from walking a mile or running a mile? What defining characteristic is missing from "paleo diet"? Why do bones strengthen from use but porcelain doesn't?

And you might even get a feel for why humans will always pilot passenger airplanes from the flight deck, no matter how much the MBA's in the office want to do away with them.

Long but drives you to re-listen

This is a long listen but it's almost essential to re-listen because there's so much practical applicability in the anti-fragility concept. You'll be deriving life lessons for years to come.

Stellar in every way.

Listening to this book is like nourishment for your mind. I often use the references given by Mr. Taleb to the philosophers of antiquity to expand my understanding of classic literature.

Great Counter -Point to Steven Pinker

Taleb does a masterful.job of diagnosing the pathos in our modern society. I can't agree with his ethos, as it os grounded in no Immutable Truth and, ironically, amounts to the same Telos as Pinker; survival of the fittest.

Humanity is about to rediscover why that idea is horrible.

Brilliant

Really helped me understand a better way of viewing the world and the “experts” navigating us through.

Great book as usual

Taleb always delivers … provocative and makes you realize you need to shake all your believes and thoughts

Good ideas but

Some of the ideas and concepts are good but lack a defined structure making it hard to understand.
Also sounds very cranky.