Antifragile

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a very interesting writer. He is an economist, and a philosopher. His book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder offers some useful insights into dealing with uncertainty and chaos.

I look at most things through a somatic lens. My interest is in bodies and the experience of embodied living. It’s odd and refreshing to me to find information in the writing of an economist. The parallels in finance and physical reality are fascinating.

Taleb implies a bold and wonderful idea right in the title- Some things gain from disorder. Entropy is not automatically a drain on the system. The challenge of disorder can stimulate a growth response. An example of this in a physical context is running over rough ground. Variation in terrain is certainly a challenge, but it is in some ways a lesser challenge than the numbing sameness of artificial surfaces. Running on pavement or other flat surfaces tends to allow us to lose focus in a way that natural ground does not.

A good test of long term strategies is to see how they respond to introducing some chaos. If the highly improbable happens, do we still have a viable response? If not, we are fragile- at least concerning that particular challenge. Doing something to change that status seems wise.