Book: 20230409 to 20230730, "Antifragile" by Taleb, Nassim Nicholas

20230409 - Prologue

Fragile vs Robust vs Antifragile

I never thought about this difference before. Interesting.

Is it really possible to gain from "bad things"?

BOOK I: THE ANTIFRAGILE: AN INTRODUCTION
20230409 - Chapter 1. Between Damocles and Hydra

Half of Life Has No Name
Please Behead Me
On the Necessity of Naming
Proto-Antifragility
Domain Independence Is Domain Dependent

How many colours are there in real world? How many of those colours have name?

The black swans will impact us sooner or later. To handle them, we need to live in Renaissance lifestyle ("Early Retirement Extreme").

Based on what I learned from GPT-4, it seems that all knowledge/art/inspiration/intuition/etc. are patterns/models. So, AI doesn't have domain dependence. What it learned from medical area could be used in rocket manufacturing immediately. Human can also do that, but very slow, and only a tiny percentage of people can do that occasionally.

20230425 - Chapter 2. Overcompensation and Overreaction Everywhere

How to Win a Horse Race

Antifragile Responses as Redundancy

On the Antifragility of Riots, Love, and Other Unexpected Beneficiaries of Stress

Please Ban My Book: The Antifragility of Information

Get Another Job

Can overcompensation and overreaction bring us antifragility?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For example, this doesn't suit the reputation case.

But for most of people, in most of the situation, this might be the only approach.

Is it possible to adopt this strategy to slow down ageing?

20230425 - Chapter 3. The Cat and the Washing Machine

The Complex

Stressors Are Information

Equilibrium, Not Again

Crimes Against Children

Punished by Translation

Touristification

The Secret Thirst for Chance

We are not machines. So, we should not treat ourselves as machines.

This means, randomness helps us to grow stronger and wiser. That's the reason that we need to be careful about any routine. Routine means we can let subconscious in control, which let our consciousness degrade.

But, routine can turn knowledge into skill/subconsciousness. So we need balance between routine and randomness.

20230427 - Chapter 4. What Kills Me Makes Others Stronger

Antifragility by Layers

Evolution and Unpredictability

Organisms Are Populations and Populations Are Organisms

Thank You, Errors

Learning from the Mistakes of Others

How to Become Mother Teresa

Why the Aggregate Hates the Individual

What Does Not Kill Me Kills Others

Me and Us

National Entrepreneur Day

Yes, the whole society is a huge organism. It has to sacrifice some "cells" to survive and grow.

As individual, we need to grow as much as possible, and encourage to do the same thing.

Should we give all individuals basic protection? Where is the boundary?

The chapter also proves that "Bible" is wrong. The God can only love the whole collective OR the individuals, but not both.

We need many sources of income. If some of them don't go well, the others can pick up. Is that kind of Antifragility? Will the impact encourage us to learn more skills, so we will become more versatile?

BOOK II: MODERNITY AND THE DENIAL OF ANTIFRAGILITY
20230508 - Chapter 5. The Souk and the Office Building

Two Types of Professions

Lenin in Zurich

Bottom-up Variations

Away from Extremistan

The Great Turkey Problem

Twelve Thousand Years

War, Prison, or Both

Pax Romana

War or No War

Is taxi driver more antifragile than bank clerk as career? I don't agree. There are so many black swans waiting for almost any job security. "Early Retirement Extreme" is right. We need multiple income source to be antifragile/resilient.

How about Switzerland? Is it more antifragile than other countries? I don't think so. If many countries follow Switzerland, some of them surely will go down. Without USA, Switzerland would be destroyed by Germany.

What can  make a country antifragile? Innovation. If some country can innovate quickly, then it's antifragile. And innovation needs inclusive institutions. ("Why Nations Fail")

How to prevent a state or a company grow too large? Can we tax large company with higher income tax?

United States has 50 states. Each state has their own law and even tax rate. Maybe that's the best solution.

20230509 - Chapter 6. Tell Them I Love (Some) Randomness

Hungry Donkeys

Political Annealing

That Time Bomb Called Stability

The Second Step: Do (Small) Wars Save Lives?

What to Tell the Foreign Policy Makers

What Do We Call Here Modernity?

Bad things could be useful.

If someone always make good money from share market, he/she is more likely to lose all money one day.

If a tribe can always find the right direction to get more food, sooner or later, as they don't believe that they may not be able of getting enough food for quite long time, they would surely get into big trouble.

Safety and stability are normally just illusion. If we don't prepare for the black swans, we will be hit hard.

How many people in Australia have the capability to run the government? I guess thousands. Any state government PM can do it, no matter which party they are in.

Voting mechanism created many good leaders for a nation. That make the nation resilient and even antifragile.

How many colours are there in nature? How many colours have name? Doers know more than our existing knowledge system.

20230511 - Chapter 7. Naive Intervention

Intervention and Iatrogenics

First, Do No Harm

The Opposite of Iatrogenics

Iatrogenics in High Places

Can a Whale Fly Like an Eagle?

Not Doing Nothing

Non-Naive Interventionism

In Praise of Procrastination—the Fabian Kind

Neuroticism in Industrial Proportions

A Legal Way to Kill People

Media-Driven Neuroticism

The State Can Help—When Incompetent

France Is Messier than You Think

Sweden and the Large State

Catalyst-as-Cause Confusion

How to tell signal from noise? Time. If some information is still important one year later, then it's signal. This means, 99.99% of information we get are noise.

Screen is like sugar. It gives us information(calorie), but normally is useless. If we absorb a lot of information, we may look like know a lot, but what we get is actually "fat", not "muscle".   (p127)

Why China got crisis every around 200 years? Why China can recover quickly after that? I think it's because of totalitarianism.

20230524 - Chapter 8. Prediction as a Child of Modernity

Ms. Bré Has Competitors

The Predictive

Plus or Minus Bad Teeth

The Idea of Becoming a Non-Turkey

No More Black Swans

Instead of removing or avoiding greed, it's better to build a greed-proof system.

This type of system is expensive. It's "unnecessarily" solid and expensive. Just like the democracy government comparing to highly efficient totalitarian state. However, the sacrifice of efficiency is meaningful. It makes the system antifragile.

Any system, if human get involved, it is affected by the Black Swans.

BOOK III: A NONPREDICTIVE VIEW OF THE WORLD
20230525 - Chapter 9. Fat Tony and the Fragilistas

Indolent Fellow Travelers

The Importance of Lunch

The Antifragility of Libraries

On Suckers and Nonsuckers

Loneliness

What the Nonpredictor Can Predict

Nero sounds like the traditional rational people who are well educated, and Fat Tony learned a lot from real world.

Nero is robust, and Fat Tony is antifragile. Fat Tony doesn't exist if there is no Nero.

How to transform from Nero to Fat Tony?

20230525 - Chapter 10. Seneca’s Upside and Downside

Is This Really Serious?

Less Downside from Life

Stoicism’s Emotional Robustification

The Domestication of Emotions

How to Become the Master

The Foundational Asymmetry

Is the rich more fragile than the poor? They have more to lose, but also have more left in their pocket.

The psychological trick from Seneca is useful. It's quite similar to the one from Budda.

Can we extend this trick to other area? Such as health? I guess I can.

We are all going to die soon, maybe much sooner than we thought. Everyday is a miracle to everyone.

20230527 - Chapter 11. Never Marry the Rock Star

On the Irreversibility of Broken Packages

Seneca’s Barbell

The Accountant and the Rock Star

Away from the Golden Middle

The Domestication of Uncertainty

Barbell strategy is mainly for survival, not for profit. It should be used in many domains. For example, 

1. drink alcohol 2 days per week, but no alcohol at all in the rest 5 days.

2. do HIIT 3 days per week, but only walking a lot in the rest 4 days?

3. talk to people in extreme situation, not the middle class

How about food? Maybe we should eat junk food 2 days per week?

How about work? Should we work intensely 3 days per week, but not work at all in the rest 4 days?

How about trip?

How about the education to children?

How about hobbies?

How about books?

BOOK IV: OPTIONALITY, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTELLIGENCE OF ANTIFRAGILITY

Do You Really Know Where You Are Going?

The Teleological Fallacy

America’s Principal Asset

 

We are not machines, and we cannot control everything around us. So we don't always do what we planned to do.

However, we should have adjustable long term and short term targets. Whatever we are doing, we should keep those targets in mind.

20230610 - Chapter 12. Thales’ Sweet Grapes

Option and Asymmetry

The Options of Sweet Grapes

Saturday Evening in London

Your Rent

Asymmetry

Things That Like Dispersion

The Thalesian and the Aristotelian

How to Be Stupid

Nature and Options

The Rationality

Life Is Long Gamma

Roman Politics Likes Optionality

There are at least three types of "randomness".

1. The cost is low and limited, but the potential return is large.

For example, walk out of comfort zone and do something challenging. Read. Exercise.

2. The benefit is low and limited, but the potential harm is huge.

For example, keep money in bank saving account. Watching screens. Eating junk food.

3. True randomness.

For example, the share price in short term.

20230611 - Chapter 13. Lecturing Birds on How to Fly

Once More, Less Is More

Mind the Gaps

Search and How Errors Can Be Investments

Creative and Uncreative Destructions

The Soviet-Harvard Department of Ornithology

Epiphenomena

Greed as a Cause

Debunking Epiphenomena

Cherry-picking (or the Fallacy of Confirmation)

Innovation has three phases.

1. Invent the idea; 2. Apply the idea to practical application; 3 Spread the new production;

Knowledge is only useful in the third phase.

In modern society, the first and the second phase is more difficult.

Math causes harm from time to time. I think that's part of the cost/invest.

20230611 - Chapter 14. When Two Things Are Not the “Same Thing”

Where Are the Stressors?

L’Art pour l’Art, to Learn for Learning’s Sake

Polished Dinner Partners

The Green Lumber Fallacy

How Fat Tony Got Rich (and Fat)

Conflation

Prometheus and Epimetheus

The new university in Abu Dhabi failed its mission. p202

Knowledge doesn't equal to wealth.

If I was the president of united arab emirates, I would copy the idea of sovereign fund from Norway, and use the money to purchase Russell 2000 index fund. That doesn't solve the root problem, but can buy some time.

When the first principle goes agains optionality, who is going to win? Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc. all chose the first principle. But do they succeed by the first principle or, or more by luck?

Optionality strategy is surely correct, but it doesn't replace hard work.

The first principle is actually a story. In most cases it's very hard to verify it. So it's wise to rely more on optionality strategy.

20230623 - Chapter 15. History Written by the Losers

The Evidence Staring at Us

Is It Like Cooking?

The Industrial Revolution

Governments Should Spend on Nonteleological Tinkering, Not Research

The Case in Medicine

Matt Ridley’s Anti-Teleological Argument

Corporate Teleology

The Inverse Turkey Problem

To Fail Seven Times, Plus or Minus Two

The Charlatan, the Academic, and the Showman

Without the support of academy, practioners would hit the ceiling quickly. There was no way to organize hundreds of practioners to work together for hundreds of years to solve some critical problems.

The knowledge in the head of those practioners is fragile, without keeping it in books as theories.

However, we do need to admit that academy is not the silver bullet to solve problems. We need trial and error process to get deeper understanding of science.

20230623 - Chapter 16. A Lesson in Disorder

The Ecological and the Ludic

The Touristification of the Soccer Mom

An Antifragile (Barbell) Education

Starting from high school, the knowledge we got from teachers are not really useful. The useful things are always we learned outside of school, from the books we read chosen by ourselves.

"Don't flunk." This is what we need to do in University.

"Don't waste time." This is what we should do in University.

Getting double degrees is waste of time.

20230624 - Chapter 17. Fat Tony Debates Socrates

Euthyphro

Fat Tony Versus Socrates

Primacy of Definitional Knowledge

Mistaking the Unintelligible for the Unintelligent

Tradition

The Sucker-Nonsucker Distinction

Fragility, Not Probability

Conflation of Events and Exposure

Conclusion to Book IV

What Will Happen Next?

Knowledge is the map of the reality. There is no details in map, and we should not asking for it.

Most part of the map is useless to a specific person at specific stage. That's the problem of formal education system. No one knows what part of the map is needed for his/her future. It's better to learn whatever we need when we trying to reach out target.

Socrates made a mistake. He thought we need to draw map for every bit of reality. That's not true. We only need map at macro level.

If we only consider probability, we missed the effectiveness of the event. If there is a chance to lose everything, then no matter what probability it is to win, we will lose everything if we play the game many, many times.

That's the reason that we always hate risk. Normally we prefer to sacrifice potential gain to avoid risk. That's why we should only purchse insurance for the risk which is too big to bear.

BOOK V: THE NONLINEAR AND THE NONLINEAR

On the Importance of Attics

Where does great perception come from? A lot of reading, thinking, verifying, and idea exchange, for years.

20230702 - Chapter 18. On the Difference Between a Large Stone and a Thousand Pebbles

A Simple Rule to Detect the Fragile

Why Is Fragility Nonlinear?

When to Smile and When to Frown

Why Is the Concave Hurt by Black Swan Events?

Traffic in New York

Someone Call New York City Officials

Where More Is Different

A “Balanced Meal”

Run, Don’t Walk

Small May Be Ugly, It Is Certainly Less Fragile

How to Be Squeezed

Kerviel and Micro-Kerviel

How to Exit a Movie Theater

Projects and Prediction

Why Planes Don’t Arrive Early

Wars, Deficits, and Deficits

Where the “Efficient” Is Not Efficient

Pollution and Harm to the Planet

The Nonlinearity of Wealth

Conclusion

Fragility is (almost) the other side of efficiency. If we use plastic or stainless steel or even wood to replace porcelain to build plate or cup, we main replace it every a few years, and may need to spend more time and money (detergent) to clean it. Pocelain can last forever and it is always easy to clean.

If we build the same parts all in one place (like China), then deliver it to other countries, the cost to value could be the lowest. However, it's also the most fragile strategy.

How to avoid these fragilities? Invest in extra cost to make buffer to handle unexpected issues.

20230703 - Chapter 19. The Philosopher’s Stone and Its Inverse

How to Detect Who Will Go Bust

The Idea of Positive and Negative Model Error

How to Lose a Grandmother

Now the Philosopher’s Stone

How to Transform Gold into Mud: The Inverse Philosopher’s Stone

Nonlinear is common sense, but most of people cannot bring it cross domains.

We need to pay extra attention to fluctuation, and fluctuation is everywhere. Some are good, and some are bad.

Knowing fluctuation is not good enough. We need to know whether it's good or bad fluctuation.

Why self-driving is good? Because it removes fluctuation of human's attention.

Why we need to bring thick jacket when traveling in a place with average 25 celsius degree? The night could be chilling.

Maybe that's why we should do exercise and Intermittent fasting, as they bring fluctuations to our lives.

20230713 - BOOK VI: VIA NEGATIVA

Where Is the Charlatan?

Subtractive Knowledge

Barbells, Again

Less Is More

How to live a good life? It's not about what to do, but about what to avoid. For example, don't say in comfort zone. Then what? Anything could be good, just don't stay in comfort zone.

Another one: don't expose too much to risk.

Maybe, this is the reason that we should meditate, so we can avoid distracting thoughts. Then we can focus on really important things.

If there is more than one motivation to do something, we need to be careful. Most likely it's our subconscious trying to convince ourselves, which normally is wrong.

20230716 - Chapter 20. Time and Fragility

From Simonides to Jensen

Learning to Subtract

Technology at Its Best

To Age in Reverse: The Lindy Effect

A Few Mental Biases

Neomania and Treadmill Effects

Architecture and the Irreversible Neomania

Wall to Wall Windows

Metrification

Turning Science into Journalism

What Should Break

Prophets and the Present

Empedocles’ Dog

What Does Not Make Sense

The concept of "subtract" is critical. What innovation will survive? The one that can reduce effort to achieve same amount of result.

So, will AirBnb and Uber survive? Yes.

How about residential solar panel and home battery? It needs to be very reliable, apart from battery price reduction.

Regarding Empedocles' Dog. I think Taleb missed the point. It's more about risk. If we stay in comfort zone and don't get hurt, then it has benefit comparing with going out for a trip. This is at gene level. The one who like exploring were more likely to die early 100k years ago.

But things changed today. We should leave comfort zone for self-improvement, instead of staying there for survivement.

20230716 - Chapter 21. Medicine, Convexity, and Opacity

How to Argue in an Emergency Room

First Principle of Iatrogenics (Empiricism)

Second Principle of Iatrogenics (Nonlinearity in Response)

Jensen’s Inequality in Medicine

Burying the Evidence

The Never-ending History of Turkey Situations

Nature’s Opaque Logic

Guilty or Innocent

Plead Ignorance of Biology: Phenomenology

The Ancients Were More Caustic

How to Medicate Half the Population

The “Rigor of Mathematics” in Medicine

When trying to become antifragile, Taleb broke his nose seriously. Is this just bad luck? Or is this the cost/risk that we have to pay to become antifragile?

No medicine is without its side effect. It's better to think about the root cause of the problem, instead of swallowing medicine.

We should only have medicine or take surgery when it's necessary. However, how to decide whether it is necessary? No easy way for that.

Anyway, the correct attitude is important.

20230717 - Chapter 22. To Live Long, but Not Too Long

Life Expectancy and Convexity

Subtraction Adds to Your Life

The Iatrogenics of Money

Religion and Naive Interventionism

If It’s Wednesday, I Must Be Vegan

Convexity Effects and Random Nutrition

How to Eat Yourself

Walk-Deprived

I Want to Live Forever

OK, I am convinced that fruit and milk are not that healthy. In old days, food shortage is common, so we'd better have more of fruit and milk. But nowadays, we don't need that much milk, and fruit is too sweet. It's better to have more vegetable.

Intermittent fasting is also critical. Mediterranean-style diet with 40 day fasting seems work well. Japanese work so long although they have rice as main calorie source, I think it's also because they don't eat much.

Free-weight walking is surely good.

BOOK VII: THE ETHICS OF FRAGILITY AND ANTIFRAGILITY
20230730 - Chapter 23. Skin in the Game: Antifragility and Optionality at the Expense of Others

Hammurabi

The Talker’s Free Option

Postdicting

The Stiglitz Syndrome

The Problem of Frequency, or How to Lose Arguments

The Right Decision for the Wrong Reason

The Ancients and the Stiglitz Syndrome

To Burn One’s Vessels

How Poetry Can Kill You

The Problem of Insulation

Champagne Socialism

Soul in the Game

Options, Antifragility, and Social Fairness

The Robert Rubin Free Option

Which Adam Smith?

The Antifragility and Ethics of (Large) Corporations

Artisans, Marketing, and the Cheapest to Deliver

Lawrence of Arabia or Meyer Lansky

Once FSD replaced human drivers, the traffic system is much more efficient and is much safer, but much more fragile. 50 years after that, there will be almost no one know how to drive a vehicle, or no vehicle allowing people to drive it. Is that good or bad? 3700 people die in traffic everyday is a heavy burden.

The modern world is complicated. There is no way to keep every corperation have skin in the game. Most of people are working as agency, and don't take loss if the company they work for go bankruptcy. We cannot ask everyone to live like Jacob Lund Fisker (from "Early Retirement Extreme").

So, how to solve this problem? Keep companies small? Maybe this is the only effective solution, but large computer system, such as AI, require large investment, and only large companies have the resource to organize the development project.

20230730 - Chapter 24. Fitting Ethics to a Profession

Wealth Without Independence

The Professionals and the Collective

The Ethical and the Legal

Casuistry as Optionality

Big Data and the Researcher’s Option

The Tyranny of the Collective

What is freedom? Have the capability to say NO, and have the courage to say NO!

Do we have solid evidence to prove that global warming is caused by burning fossil fuel? NO.

Do we have solid envidenc to prove that burning fossil fuel doesn't cause global warming? NO.

Burning fossil fuel changes the nature. So we should ask the second question instead of the first one.

Double-Blind Study is necessary to tell the difference between correlation and causation.

20230730 - Chapter 25. Conclusion

20230730 - Epilogue

Our subconscious cannot recognize new volatilities in modern society. That's why we need to pay attention to the events in our daily lives. So we can gain from them, and be antifragile.