What I'm thinking about
Antifragility
Antifragility is a concept popularized by the statistician and scholar Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile from 2012. By now the concept has entered into popular consciousness and like many other technical and complex ideas, it has been watered down and misapplied in a wide variety of ways. Although I risk contributing to this further, I want to share my understanding of the concept since I find it both intriguing and useful.
Fragility vs antifragility
If you drop a regular glass on the floor it'll likely break immediately. A glass with some rubber coating might survive a longer fall but will nevertheless break if the fall is long enough. You could say that a well-protected glass is more robust than a regular glass, but is still fragile. Compare that kind of object with something like the human body. The human body is not just robust enough to survive a lot of stressors, but can actively adapt to them and increase its capabilities as a result of undergoing - and surviving - the stressors. The human body is antifragile. The glass is fragile.
Something that is fragile will break quite easily under stress. Something that is robust can handle more stress, maybe more kinds of stress, but will break and does not adapt to the stressors. Something that is antifragile will become less fragile - and more resilient - when a stressor is applied by adapting to the stressor.
The opposite of something fragile is not something that is robust, it's something that is antifragile.
Weight training is a classic example. If you apply the right amount of stress to your muscles they are broken down a bit, but not so much as to cause irreparable damage. Instead, they will not just heal back to the point of regular functioning (that would be resilience) but will overadapt to the stressors, healing and rebuilding new muscle cells above the prior baseline. Human bodies undergoing weight training regimens that apply enough but not too much stress causes a "beneficial" adaption. This makes the human body antifragile.
Antifragile systems are those that gain from disorder because they are able to adapt, and as a result of the stressors, expand their functional or operational scope. The antifragile likes variation.
Limiting the downside
Another aspect of antifragility is a matter of what you (or any given system) stand to lose or gain from a given future event. It's related to the concept of ergodicity which I've written about before.
If you are positioned in such a way that a future event will lead to at most a limited loss or recoverable tragedy, but a potentially unlimited upside, you could say that you or your behavior is antifragile. An obvious example here is investing: a badly balanced investing portfolio puts you at great risk in the case of a future recession or depression because you could lose all your money. An antifragile investing portfolio is one that not only survives a downturn but that will adapt and gain from volatility. One where your long-term potential to make money is basically unlimited, in part because your downside risk is “capped”.
Another way to put this is that "Going to cocktail parties is antifragile – you can only lose a bit of time (limited downside) but you could meet someone who will change your life (unlimited upside)." (via Taylor Pearson).
Antifragilization
Finally, systems will exhibit fragile and antifragile responses along a spectrum. Antifragile systems that adapt and gain from stressors can break when the stressors become too large. Although they don't become fragile as a system, it is the fact that they can exhibit a fragile reaction at all that also makes them antifragile.
Put differently, a system can exhibit a neutral, an antifragile, or a fragile response to a given stressor. It's the magnitude of the stressor that will determine the response. Antifragilization occurs when the "right amount" of a stressor is applied.
The right amount of weight training will cause favorable adaptions in your muscles and make them grow. Too much weight training (that you can't recover from) can hurt you and might even cause muscle loss. But it is the fact that the muscles are fragile enough to respond to stressors that enable them to be antifragile as a system - as long as those stressors are limited in scope.
The key aspect of antifragile systems is not that they won't break, but that they overadapt to the right amount of stressors.
Interested in learning more about antifragility and adaptive systems? I highly recommend you check out the online course “Antifragile Organizations” by Luca Delanna (from whom I learned the concept of Antifragilization). The course focuses on but covers much more than just organizational matters from an antifragile angle. It’s widely applicable to life in general. I just finished the course and learned a ton!
What I'm reading
A framework for creating positive behaviors
An in-depth guide based on 10 conditions necessary for behavior change. The ten conditions describe all the necessary parts and steps required for successful behavior change in people. You can use them to troubleshoot particular failed behavior changes or the failed introduction of new habits into your or other’s lives.
Bitcoin and blockchains
I'm currently learning about blockchain technology, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies and came across the first-ever mention of Bitcoin. It was in an email sent by the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto to a cryptography mailing list on October 31st, 2008. The first sentence reads as follows:
"I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party."
I can’t imagine that Satoshi (he/she/they) could have ever imagined the scope of what Bitcoin has become today.
What I'm watching
How Tarantino shoots movies at three budget levels.
If you appreciate Tarantino movies and the nuances of movie-making, this is great.
What I'm listening to
Sam Harris and Ricky Gervais discuss everything from comedy, dreaming and whether or not AI will replace comedians. Absolutely delightful conversations.
On another note, I'm planning on changing the frequency and the style of these newsletters.
Instead of the bi-weekly(ish) newsletter with links to content and commentary. I want to take my time to write longer articles and essays, probably just a few per year about topics or things I'm really interested in.
But I'd be curious to know from you if you enjoy these shorters newsletters with just a few content pieces in the style of "What I'm reading/watching/listening to"? Would you prefer to get fewer but longer newsletters, or more frequent but shorter? Just reply to this email and let me know what you think - I really value your input here!
As always, stay safe out there.
/Phil
I "think" I got it, anti fragility. I wonder; what drove you to this subject?