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)

This is a really great book

This book guides very through many things that benifit through chaos. i still havent figured out how to download the pdf with the charts yet. if anyone knows id greatly appreciate it.

Forceful and fearless

A tour de force in clear thinking and cutting through BS. Thank you for the wonderful education and your through history, ethics, and living a good life!

Are you Robust, Fragile or Anti-fragile?

Worth your money and your time. Good points on how to lead a better life.

Taleb doesn't disappoint

If you like his work, then you will love this book. If you are new to Taleb, then this book will be interesting, but the author will come across as brash or arrogant. I find his attitude amusing, but find his obervations fascinating. I Highly recommend.

Wonderful

Awesome concepts, you do need to be prepared to wade through some of the longest words you have ever heard, told with somewhat of a holier than thou attitude, which is fine because you get the feeling the author cares about his subject.
the last half of the book really has some absolutely wonderful things about being human and living a good life, stand on your own and stand for something- not just a safe, follow the herd, lukewarm life.
The story about icing swelling is one I will never forget. It made me stop and say to myself that I had never thought about that- I just always assumed Doctors knew best.

Thank you Nassim for the book and reading it for audible.

Life is long gamma

I've lived most of my life long volatility. It was only my short foray in to short volatility that caused me any real harm. Finally someone who understands.

A mind bending book, one of those books that describes certain concepts and let you thinking how nobody noticed that before

A great book overall, it describes concepts aplicable to your everyday life. Great mathematical and philosophical references as well.

This book gets better with every read...

Fellow reader, going through this book once is certainly not enough.The book gets better with every read. Up to a certain point, of course.

One of my favorite books, Better than Black Swan

Not really about anything in particular, just a long series of rants that describe the cranky author's alluring worldview. More of a philosophy book than a business book, I will read this again.

Great, until his conclusions

What did you love best about Antifragile?

I think his description of the "State of the World" is quite good. It fails in it's conclusions though.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The "present day assessment" rang mostly true.

What about Joe Ochman’s performance did you like?

I like how he captures the voice of the author. It adds a nice familiarity to it.

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

How someone I highly respect can still turn out to be deeply flawed. See next section.

Any additional comments?

More of a negative note here: Over the previous books I developed a huge respecte for Taleb. I found myself also nodding along quite a lot with what he described as the state of the world, but where he lost me was in his conclusions and interpretations.

Just two reasons.

He rightfully admires "the ancients" (Romans, Greek) for their philosophical accomplishment. Having read Lucrecius "The Nature of things" I was in similar awe and surprise. Having said that, to extend their philosophical accomplishments into that of modern science strikes me as ludicrous.

The second thing is one specific example: He writes about how can't we know that eating three solid meals doesn't have any benefits (in comparison to the recent recommendation to "graze" instead of stuffing yourself three times a day). The problem with this argument is that the three meals a day are falling back onto the industrial age, when life and time started to be dominated by the clock, not human nature. This flies straight into the face of his own assertion that he doesn't eat anything that isn't at least 2000 years old (I could now ask why 2000 years? But that's just nitpicking) because everything since then is "tainted".

I admit, it makes me a bit sad to have gotten the impression that Taleb is a bit of a Neo-Luddite.