Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Audiobook

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the writer of The Black Swan once again presents us with an interesting and original theory in Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. In The Black Swan, Taleb argued that certain large-scale, improbable events such as WWI cannot be predicted. As human beings, we keep trying to figure out what will happen in the future based on what's happening now, but the narrative keeps changing and fools us all.

In Antifragile, he suggests that there are certain things that are the opposite of fragile. They're not merely robust or resilient because this would mean that they take negative impacts but survive through them. Antifragile things don't just survive negative impacts; they grow and benefit from them. He gives several examples of this kind of thinking which applies in people's personal lives as well as in society as a whole.

Taleb points out that the actions of overprotective parents can result in a child actually becoming weaker rather than stronger, and patients who are constantly visiting the doctor can end up being more sickly. If you look at the larger picture, a banking system with many small banks turns out to be stronger or "antifragile" when compared to one big bank. From this point of view, small is often better and more resilient than big. Whereas a tree may get uprooted in a storm, grasses survive because they can bend in the breeze.

What you end up taking away from Taleb's book is a healthy tendency to take manageable risks, try many new things and generally enjoy the chaos that is a part of life.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American who was born in Lebanon to a physician and oncologist and a researcher in anthropology. His family has played a prominent role in Lebanese politics, with his grandfather and great-grandfather being deputy Prime Ministers. He attended the University of Paris where he got his Bachelor's and earned an MBA at the Wharton School at UPenn. Then he returned to Paris and got his Ph.D. in Management Science. He has taught at Oxford University and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. He has also worked as a Wall Street trader and a hedge fund manager.

"Wow. No wonder The Independent called Taleb a "superhero of the mind" - this is a hugely impressive and entertaining book not least because Taleb identifies that leadership in today's world is a much devalued coinage. Remember that scene in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 when he asks politicians why their sons aren't in the US forces fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan? The politicians look at Moore like he's so dumb, but for Taleb these men are "inverse heroes" and he reminds us that Roman engineers had to sleep under their bridges, and that in the Hammurabi culture if a man builds a house and that house collapses and kills the owner, the builder is put to death. If it kills the owner's son, the builder's son is put to death, and if a slave, a slave of equal value must be given to the owner. But we live in a world of fakery where drones are launched and wars started by men who never have to live with their consequences. "I am distraught for the future of the human race when I see a nerd behind a computer in a DC suburb, within walking distance of a Starbucks coffeehouse, or a shopping mall, capable of blowing up an entire batallion in a remote place, say Pakistan, and afterwards going to the gym for a 'workout' - compare his culture to that of knights or the samurai."His most intense analysis is reserved for the world of finance. He insists that the financial crisis WAS identified pre-crash, that key personnel KNEW that the property market was over-heating, but the ratings agencies, the banks, the markets et al didn’t want the bubble to burst and conspired to shut the danger signals down. Alan Greenspan “caused the risks to go hide under the carpet and accumulate there until they blew up the economy”. In the case of the academic economist Joseph Stiglitz, “the very same economist who caused the problem (he published a report in 2002 with two colleagues about Fannie Mae saying that the risk of a potential default was “effectively zero”) then “post-directed the crisis, and then became a theorist on what happened – no wonder we have a larger crises”. For Stiglitz in the US, we have Ed Balls in the UK – too many of the architects of the global financial crisis are still hanging around. Taleb insists that if this activity was taking place in nature, “his genes would have been extinct”. Stiglitz/Balls are part of a “severe disease, one that explains why economists will blow us up again”. And he’s formulated this apercu into a theory: the Stiglitz Syndrome – people who put their name to junk science and pay no price for the mayhem they cause. The cure is not to ask anyone’s opinion, but to look at what they do and don’t have in their investment portfolios. The people Taleb calls “fragilistas” – “people who cause fragility because they think they understand what’s going on” – have to be made accountable for their activities. Otherwise they have, as he puts it, “no skin in the game”. Only people with skin in the game – something to lose – are worth listening to. Taleb is a fantastic writer and Antifragile is the work of a modern-day titan."

— Mike (5 out of 5 stars)