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)

genius

NNT provides his clearest explanation of randomness, non-linerar effects and extreme events yet, with plenty of social commentary along the way.

Helpful

It's great to hear the voice of reason in economics every now and then. He has a great writing style. I love the sarcasm and humor.

Taleb is great. Ochman is great.

Read anti fragile. Read the Black Swan. Read Fooled by Randomness. Read skin in the game. And then read them again.

in the words of the great Bob Dorough, "you'll never wish you hadn't."

Best book ever.

This is my very first review ! 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅 best book 📚 ever highly recommend he is very right.

Great listen minus the extreme accusations

I really like how he sharply pointed out the fatal flaws in many of our systems today, but at the same time got really annoyed by his extreme accusations toward scientific results and obsessions with holistic medicine. Don’t get me wrong, there are some truth to his words there, but he overgeneralized it too much. I think he mainly dislikes social scientists especially economists. I think the dislike has some merits, but when he talks about problems specific to social scientists, it sounds like he is talking about the entire academia and scientific community, giving almost an anti-science impression (although he is actually not anti-science). His views on western medicine is too extreme and clearly biased by some personal experience. If everyone follows his advice something bad is bound to happen.

But I learned quite a lot from this book and it’s good to hear radical opinions that differ drastically from the norm. Even for the parts that I disagree with, there are still some truth to his arguments and I benefit from that. So I subtract one star for extreme generalizations but really enjoyed it otherwise.

Fresh Air

Probably not for everyone, but the independent local businessman or woman will appreciate this book. Should be a must read.

Being robust vs anti-fargile

If you learn to become anti-fragile you will not break when life gives you challenges, but gain.

aknowlegde your lack of knowledge

a new (or an old) way to face the world, one that praises our inability to understand complex things and, even better, uses it in our advantage.

complex, will require another listen.

big language and ideas. I did not enjoy the performance. It felt rushed...to the point I checked my speed settings.

I will listen to rhis again. I found it interesting and expanded my thoughts on many things. I would call it exciting, even.

Interesting and eye opening concepts.

Good choice for narrator! Did great with accents and pronunciation.
I did struggle to follow along at first but once I got the concept it all came together. I think it would have helped to have the PDF's that were mentioned so I had the visual references.