Comment by knob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by knob | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is a cool real-life example of Taleb's antifragility.

In Puerto Rico, gas stations have had backup power generators for years (way before Hurricane María 2017). The power grid is so crappy that the generator turned out to be essential for normal business. And the owners couldn't increase the price over pre-set parameters (Puerto Rico's DACO sets those).

Meager profit margins on gas sales have been irrelevant in this situation. Once Joe down the avenue installs a generator on his gas station, you have to keep up with the Joneses.

So antifragility made it happen: the impact of lost-sales wasn't enough to bring down the gas station... yet enough of a stressor to push the installation of backup power generators.

As an aside: From the people of Puerto Rico, thanks again to all the beautiful people from the States that came over to help. Thank you.

Why do people say antifragile instead of robust?

IMO it's the difference between a really strong piece of ceramic that happens to not break when you whack it with a hammer, and something like safety glass that shatters yet stays intact. The ceramic is robust, but with a big enough whack it'll shatter into a million pieces - but the fragility of the safety glass is known and prepared for to the point where it breaking doesn't lead to a complete failure.

Sounds smarter.

Because they mean different things. A robust system is one that can tolerate stress without suffering much harm. An antifragile system is one that actually benefits from stress.

DuskStar is pretty close.

Anti-fragile describes systems that improve from disorder. Robust describes ones that resist disorder.

The ceramic plate is robust: it’s very strong, and unlikely to break when things go wrong (e.g. it gets dropped). But it’s not anti-fragile, it will never be made better by dropping, at best it won’t get worse.

The petrol market in Puerto Rico is anti-fragile because the disorder of small power failures made it better, they added backup power so that the system would be more robust next time the power went out.

I discovered that this is the titular concept behind a popular self-help/philosophy book.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com