Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder – Review | Hacker News Reader

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder – Review

jseliger.wordpress.com

39 pointsjseliger18 comments

Taleb's writing style is atrocious and his personality obnoxious, but his fundamental ideas are profoundly interesting and important. At its root is the idea that we humans don't understand the world we live in, but we think we do. This is just as true of "intellectuals", whose lack of understanding is merely better concealed. (Most of Taleb's critics are those, like professors, government big wigs, mainstream media editors and pundits, and the like, whose personal power depends on their ability to convince others that they understand the world better than we do.)

Taleb's books, unlike almost all other "policy" books, isn't about replacing the bad theories of others with his own correct theories. It is about how best to live well despite our lack of correct theories. He examines the implications of this idea in many, MANY areas, and I think he draws the wrong conclusions some of the time. The needs of his own personality are omnipresent, which gets very tedious.

But this idea of how to live well in a world nobody understands is a fascinating, and potentially very valuable, concept to explore. Taleb's books force me to ponder this question more thoroughly than any others I've read.

At its root is the idea that we humans don't understand the world we live in, but we think we do.

This is a false (and needless) dichotomy. We understand it pretty well, but there's still lots to learn. Some fields more than others.

It's far too trendy to say 'X is a black box and we don't understand it - only the smart people know that we know nothing', where X is 'the world', 'the brain', 'economics', or whatever. It promotes anti-intellectualism and glorifies ignorance.

SiVal, your comment makes all of us at HN expect that every Article has such a TL;DR

anyhow, thanks for summing it up. Saves quite some time, when people do this. I am really glad, when there is an article where the top-voted comment says, "you must read all of this, really" or something with along that lines or sentient. Because that's the main reason HN exists, to provide resources that ARE valuable for y-combinator people and their friends.

But taxi drivers are interesting example because we’re approaching the point at which self- driving cars may become common, which would be a major professional Black Swan for taxi drivers.

He was using the Taxi driver as an allegorical device. His point was that the taxi driver saw very little job security because of variability of income, and that others saw him having job security as there would always be a demand for it. This had nothing to do with the fact that we're talking about taxi drivers here. Focusing the taxi industry is missing the point he's making.

He says that they would be robust to minor black swans and not major ones. Then you point out that they would be susceptible to major ones which he was not in disagreement with.

Seliger makes strong claims about 'fallacies' in the book, but supports them only by his opinions on what's true and what's not. Example: he's trying to persuade us that global warming introduces a risk of a sudden catastrophe, and it's easy to prevent that. The reality is quite opposite: there's nothing sudden in the warming process (we're discussing it for 20 years and still some people deny it exists), and there is no easy way of preventing it.

In his books Taleb is weirdly reluctant to address global warming and climate change, which may be the ultimate nonlinear Black Swan system of our age—prone to sudden shocks that may have catastrophic results. There is a brief mention of the issue on page 415 of Antifragile, but he doesn’t discuss the issue in any detail.

Actually I find Taleb's point about not meddling with complex systems much more persuasive in the AGW debate than the dubious scientific research that gets churned out.

AGW wouldn't be a black swan by Taleb's definition anyway, which requires it being completely unpredictable and unforeseen, except in hindsight. Accidental discoveries, like of penicillin, are his best examples. AGW and its effects are more like grey swans - somewhat predictable and foreseen.

Hmm, the warming itself might be predictable but the side-effects could be a different matter.

What warming? There hasn't been any for 10 years.

tl;dr liberal intellectual claims criticism about liberal intellectuals and their friends are invalid.

OH NOES NOT LIBERAL INTELLECTUALS.

How on earth did we get to the point where calling someone smart is an insult?

I think there's a more subtle point here. Being smart is good, being overly certain of the ultimate power of reason to solve all problems is something else. It's also a common Achilles heel of smart people.

"Elsewhere, Taleb writes that “The intellectual today is vastly more powerful and dangerous than before,” which I find flattering..."

puke

"...but rarely have I read a book with such a correct thesis and so many misrepresentations, needless ad-hominem attacks, and dubious stories..."

This has always been Taleb's problem. His abrasive personality and latent narcissism water down an otherwise very worthwhile message.

artisans as a group are never going to be as important as they were in, say, 1700

Neither Taleb nor Seliger (the reviewer) lists software developers as among the artisans, but I think they should. Doing so makes the quoted claim wildly false.

Except every time a computer programmer writes a program, an artisan loses his job (roughly speaking)

This reads a lot like my reaction to The Black Swan. It's interesting that Seliger says he really liked that one.

In my experience, a salient example of antifragility ("damage" and/or volatility that makes a system stronger) is Rejection Therapy[1]. Continuous rejection can actually make you more confident. Rejection gives you answers faster. It exposes weaknesses and delusional thinking. And getting rejected feels exhilarating because you've disobeyed your fear and accomplished the game's objective.

It works the other way too: the less you get rejected, the more you fear it and the more painful rejection is when it inevitably happens.

[1] http://rejectiontherapy.com

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