Or more specifically, just getting the term for it. I spent years trying to articulate in my own mind many of the ideas in Taleb's book, and once I had a word for it I could see it everywhere and actually start to change my life to take advantage of the chaos in the world.
Basically: you can't control what happens to you, but you can set your life up so that the natural variability of the world can be used to your advantage.
I can't do it justice in an HN comment, but it's one book and one idea that has changed my life.
Never heard about this. I'm starting to read some things and it seems interesting. Thanks!
And about this:
> Or more specifically, just getting the term for it. I spent years trying to articulate in my own mind many of the ideas in Taleb's book, and once I had a word for it I could see it everywhere
It is called Hypocognition, I recently read about it here [1] and here [2], and that blew my mind.
I read this before Black Swarm, but Antifragility should have been read later. When I read Antifragility, the idea is cool and convincing, and it did change the way I understand things, especially the essential difference between organic things and engineering systems, but still I always felt like it is a puzzle missing some pieces.
I am almost finishing my Black Swarm read now. It turns out that it is the missing pieces.
I wonder what Taleb will say if someone can present software engineering practices to him.
Taleb's book and premise doesn't just cover human behaviour and mindset in a Stoic philosophy although there are common points. It covers wider systems: Politics, Biology, Innovation, Economy, Life decisions, etc.
I suppose the book's premise is more about finding out how a system can be setup such that it is either resistant to or improved by variability, uncertainty, and unknowns.
A real world biology example would be the multi-purpose shape of the beak of a crow versus the specialized beak of humming bird.
The humming bird is more succesful in specific environment but it is more fragile if this environment were to collapse. The crow maybe not be as optimized but is "Anti-fragile" to eco-system changes.
I am simplifying but that is the central premise. The book goes into a lot more depth specially when re-visiting ancient history across different human eras and the 'lessons learned' from those periods.
Or more specifically, just getting the term for it. I spent years trying to articulate in my own mind many of the ideas in Taleb's book, and once I had a word for it I could see it everywhere and actually start to change my life to take advantage of the chaos in the world.
Basically: you can't control what happens to you, but you can set your life up so that the natural variability of the world can be used to your advantage.
I can't do it justice in an HN comment, but it's one book and one idea that has changed my life.