Nicholas Taleb -- Antifragile: things that gain from disorder
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It's a very enjoyable book.  Actually, I worry about it being *too*
enjoyable.  It's a bit to tempting to make consequential decisions
based on Taleb's entertaining stories.

There are lots of individual pieces of advice in this book.  I'll
leave it to you to decide whether reading through the stories and
explanations that surround these pieces of wisdom is enjoyable or
tedious.  Taleb is a serious raconteur; perhaps it's his heritage.
If you decide that you do not need *all* of the stories and details
and explanations, then you may want to start with reading just the
glossary and with looking up a few of those term in the index.

Much of the book is spent giving elaborate justifications for
conventional wisdom, things like: "Don't put all you eggs in one
basket." and "Do no harm".  

And, some of the book is merely advice that a well-intentioned
grandfather or great uncle would give.  It's of the "save for a
rainy day" and "learn to enjoy life while you can".  One
recommendation that I found interesting was to earn money in large
chunks and in bursts so that you can spend the rest of your time
(weeks, months, or years, I suppose) doing what you really want to
do.  That's useful advice for some of us in some professions I
suppose.  It likely fits a successful researcher and writer like
Taleb reasonably well.  But maybe it does not work so well for the
rest of us.

Come to think of it, most of Taleb's advice does seem quite
situation specific: it's applicable in some situations, but might be
disastrous if applied in others.

Taleb has a great love for the natural, for things that have
evolved, and for what has "stood the test of time".  But, evolution
and natural selection is a very complex thing.  It does not develop
perfect solutions or even ideal solutions; it develops what
survives.  And, even those species survive in a particular set of
conditions.  So, as with any other technology, you need to evaluate
each technology, innovation, consumer product, medical procedure, or
whatever individually and on its own merits and characteristics.

Still, we can argue that technologies, products, and processes that
have been in use for longer periods of time are more likely to have
had bugs removed and improvements made.  But, on the other hand, a
newer innovation may offer features and conveniences that are not
available on older ones.

So, I'd suggest that when you read "Antifragile", you also read "The
shock of the old", by David Edgerton.  It also shows a preference
for older, tried and true technologies.  But, his way of arguing for
those technologies is to show how well they've worked, rather than
to argue that some newer technology might blow up in your face, as
Taleb sometimes does.

Another interesting comparison is with "How nature works", by Per
Bak.  Per Bak is concerned with "self organizing criticality", by
which he means (I believe) a system that is due for breakdown and
for sequences of destructive events.  Taleb spends quite a bit of
time on systems that have been supported and kept in place until
they become "critical" or in Taleb's words, "fragile".  When Taleb
is talking about long tails and fat tails etc., he is often talking
about a system that has built up a critical state, that is, one
which has entered a regime during which breakdown and series of
events become chaotic and unpredictable.  Both Per Bak and Taleb are
helping us understand systems in which there is stress and in which
sequences of events are random.

Taleb's advice is to stay with systems that are stable (although he
does not say how to identify them) and to only take risks with
unstable systems when the possible downside is small and the
possible upside is large.

Certainly it is worthwhile to spend time thinking about identifying
which systems are stable (and which not) and about determining which
systems degrade or change gracefully (and which do not).

A lot has been said about nostalgia for the past and for what is
natural (as opposed to modern or post modern?).  And, you have to
select your 

Taleb is a raconteur, and that means that he is susceptible to what
he calls the narrative fallacy.  What grabs him is that which has an
entertaining story that can be used to explain it.

There is lots of theory in this book.  See especially Appendix II.

I had fun thinking about how some of Taleb's advice could be applied
to my life and about how my life might be different if I took some
of what Taleb said seriously.  Would I put most of my savings in
something safe like an insured interest bearing bank account, but go
long gold futures with a small amount?  Would I try to insure
everything I own?  These are interesting thoughts.  They make for
the starting points of some fascinating dreams.  But, I'm not
confident enough in Taleb's advice to make any serious changes to
the way I live.

04/15/2013

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