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hubbardrbjr 's review for:
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This was crazy good. I recommend reading it with the same wry open-mind of one who sits with his fascinating and kind of embittered uncle at Thanksgiving after he’s had a few drinks. The one who says fantastical and irrefutable things, which you will never feel confident enough to outright contradict, but whose assertions are so ludicrous and also so intuitive, you question your own sanity.
I learned so much, and found myself laughing out loud at Nassim’s contempt for things most people just accept at face value, especially the academic. Most of it is very good but I also feel that he makes some grand leaps in logic to get at conclusions; for instance, he says that constant noise makes people dumb, with one of his examples being that people living near an airport are dumber. But wouldn’t real estate with heavy noise pollution also be cheaper? So maybe it’s just that people who grow up poor don’t test as well? Or maybe it’s the inconsistency of noise and interrupted sleep? I doubt a white noise machine or sleeping with a fan would have the same effect as frequent, inconsistent interruption. A few of these sorts of things came up, where you kind of wonder, but the major claims of the book are so fun, intuitive and interesting, I give him a pass.
I learned so much, and found myself laughing out loud at Nassim’s contempt for things most people just accept at face value, especially the academic. Most of it is very good but I also feel that he makes some grand leaps in logic to get at conclusions; for instance, he says that constant noise makes people dumb, with one of his examples being that people living near an airport are dumber. But wouldn’t real estate with heavy noise pollution also be cheaper? So maybe it’s just that people who grow up poor don’t test as well? Or maybe it’s the inconsistency of noise and interrupted sleep? I doubt a white noise machine or sleeping with a fan would have the same effect as frequent, inconsistent interruption. A few of these sorts of things came up, where you kind of wonder, but the major claims of the book are so fun, intuitive and interesting, I give him a pass.