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authorcagray 's review for:
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I'm having a hard time rating this book; I don't really know how I feel about it. It's complicated.
I finished "Black Swan" and immediately looked this book up, recalling the title but not realizing at the time that it was written by the same author. What intrigued me from "Black Swan" was exactly this concept of systems that actually benefit from random Black Swan events, becoming stronger as a result of them. I wanted to know how one becomes "antifragile," which is why I read it.
I don't feel like I exactly got an answer to that question, though the concept fleshed out what I'd already intuitively understood but lacked the language to describe about the intervention-heavy approach to regulating large systems of every kind. Our economy, our government, our approach to climate, our system of medicine, are all predicated on the idea that WE know best, and WE can intervene to "fix" the thing that broke. Even if this seems to work temporarily, the long-term effect is always, always, to make the system more brittle than it was before. When the system finally breaks the next time, it's going to be that much more catastrophic and irreparable. That's why quantitative easing is such a stupid idea, as are nearly all economic interventions meant to artificially prop up the economy. It's why suppressing inflammation with steroids (except in life-threatening situations) is completely counter-productive. Our bodies, our economy, our environment, etc all operate via intricate, self-regulating feedback systems. But if we intervene to prevent these systems from doing what they do best, we will invariably cause side effects, and (worse), the underlying problem will still be there. When it finally reemerges, it will take ever more heroic measures to kick that can down the road again, and the final collapse will be that much more disastrous.
Taleb uses a lot of examples in the book of hormesis, or the concept that "the dose makes the poison," in medicine (though he made a point early on that this is NOT the same thing as antifragility, which is where something becomes better in response to randomness, rather than simply being resilient). Most of my favorite therapies in medicine are hormetic, but I was put off by his browbeating of anyone too stupid to understand the nuanced difference between hormesis and true antifragility. (A lot of hormetic therapies I think *do* make people stronger than they would have been without them.) Much of my distaste for the book comes from this overall sense that the author would almost certainly call me a moron if he ever met me.
The other problem I had with the book was that, beyond what I mentioned above, I'm not sure I came away with any concrete action steps, which is why I read it in the first place. If they were there, I missed them. (Probably because I'm a moron, I'm sure.)
I finished "Black Swan" and immediately looked this book up, recalling the title but not realizing at the time that it was written by the same author. What intrigued me from "Black Swan" was exactly this concept of systems that actually benefit from random Black Swan events, becoming stronger as a result of them. I wanted to know how one becomes "antifragile," which is why I read it.
I don't feel like I exactly got an answer to that question, though the concept fleshed out what I'd already intuitively understood but lacked the language to describe about the intervention-heavy approach to regulating large systems of every kind. Our economy, our government, our approach to climate, our system of medicine, are all predicated on the idea that WE know best, and WE can intervene to "fix" the thing that broke. Even if this seems to work temporarily, the long-term effect is always, always, to make the system more brittle than it was before. When the system finally breaks the next time, it's going to be that much more catastrophic and irreparable. That's why quantitative easing is such a stupid idea, as are nearly all economic interventions meant to artificially prop up the economy. It's why suppressing inflammation with steroids (except in life-threatening situations) is completely counter-productive. Our bodies, our economy, our environment, etc all operate via intricate, self-regulating feedback systems. But if we intervene to prevent these systems from doing what they do best, we will invariably cause side effects, and (worse), the underlying problem will still be there. When it finally reemerges, it will take ever more heroic measures to kick that can down the road again, and the final collapse will be that much more disastrous.
Taleb uses a lot of examples in the book of hormesis, or the concept that "the dose makes the poison," in medicine (though he made a point early on that this is NOT the same thing as antifragility, which is where something becomes better in response to randomness, rather than simply being resilient). Most of my favorite therapies in medicine are hormetic, but I was put off by his browbeating of anyone too stupid to understand the nuanced difference between hormesis and true antifragility. (A lot of hormetic therapies I think *do* make people stronger than they would have been without them.) Much of my distaste for the book comes from this overall sense that the author would almost certainly call me a moron if he ever met me.
The other problem I had with the book was that, beyond what I mentioned above, I'm not sure I came away with any concrete action steps, which is why I read it in the first place. If they were there, I missed them. (Probably because I'm a moron, I'm sure.)