Antifragile : things that gain from disorder Cover Image

Book

Antifragile : things that gain from disorder / Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Summary:

"The acclaimed author of the influential bestseller The Black Swan, Nicholas Nassim Taleb takes a next big step with a deceptively simple concept: the "antifragile." Like the Greek hydra that grows two heads for each one it loses, people, systems, and institutions that are antifragile not only withstand shocks, they benefit from them. In a modern world dominated by chaos and uncertainty, Antifragile is a revolutionary vision from one of the most subversive and important thinkers of our time. Praise for Nicholas Nassim Taleb "[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 "Changed my view of how the world works."--Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate"-- Provided by publisher.

"Examples of Antifragility: When you stress your body by lifting a big weight, your body gets stronger. New York has the best restaurants in the world because particular restaurants are always going bust, making the aggregate stronger and stronger, or antifragile. Evolution is antifragile. Certain business and investment strategies are antifragile. Older things tend to be more antifragile than newer ones - because they've been exposed to more Black Swans"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9781400067824 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN: 1400067820 (hardback: alk. paper)
Physical Description: xxi, 519 p. ; 25 cm
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : Random House, c2012.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [481]-504) and index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The triad, or, A map of the world and things along the three properties -- The antifragile : an introduction. Between Damocles and Hydra ; Overcompensation and overreaction everywhere ; The cat and the washing machine ; What kills me makes others stronger -- Modernity and the denial of antifragility. The souk and the office building ; Tell them I love (some) randomness ; Naive intervention ; Prediction as a child of modernity -- A nonpredictive view of the world. Fat Tony and the fragilistas ; Seneca's upside and downside ; Never marry the rock star -- Optionality, technology, and the intelligence of antifragility. Do you really know where you are going? ; Thales' sweet grapes ; Lecturing birds on how to fly ; When two things are not the "same thing" ; History written by the losers ; A lesson in disorder ; Fat Tony debates Socrates -- The nonlinear and the nonlinear. On the importance of attics ; On the difference between a large stone and a thousand pebbles ; The philosopher's stone and its inverse -- Via negativa. Time and fragility ; Medicine, convexity, and opacity ; To live long, but not too long -- The ethics of fragility and antifragility. Skin in the game : antifragility and optionality at the expense of others ; Fitting ethics to a profession.