Antifragile

Things That Gain from Disorder

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

Disappointed with the bleeps

How do you produce an audiobook with bleeped out curses? For one thing anyone listening can make out the curse word, so what's the point. A very silly distraction!