**Mom: **

Antifragile You may not have heard of Nassim Taleb, but you’ve heard of Taleb’s work. He wrote the book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” in 2007 right before the financial crisis, and now “black swan events” have entered the common parlance. In 2012, Taleb followed that up with “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder”. It’s a tough read, for reasons I will get into later,but here are some of the concepts in Antifragile I found most interesting and useful.

Changing How We Think About Stress Taleb breaks down organizations into three kinds: fragile ones that break under pressure; robust ones that resist pressure, but don’t adapt to it, and; antifragile ones that grow and improve from pressure. Or as Taleb says, “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” What Taleb calls antifragile is something that grows more powerful as a result of being stressed. A central theme of the book is that chaos and uncertainty are unavoidable stresses. You can run, but you can’t hide. Antifragile offers a path forward that asks what if we think about stress not as a thing to be avoided but rather as something to harness?

Taleb argues pretty convincingly that exposure to small, frequent stressors is necessary to become stronger, a process he calls “hormesis”. Gradual exposure to volatility strengthens the organization and allows it to tolerate more stress in the future. Kinda like exercise. Building muscle mass mass is all about the repetitions.

Why Less Really is More Book VI (yes, it’s THAT kind of book) of Antifragile is all about via negativa “the negative way” and the idea that less really is more. I have said for some time that museums are great at additive change, but they suck at subtractive change. Taleb posits embracing via negativa as an essential part of becoming more antifragile. “The road to robustness is via negativa—not by addition but by subtraction.” Embracing via negativa means strengthening your institution by removing what doesn’t serve your mission or your visitors. Retire outdated programs that no longer meet audience needs. Simplify approval processes that slow experimentation. Say “no” to projects that drain staff energy without deepening impact.

Optionality Taleb argues that antifragile systems prioritize maintaining their flexibility and pursue multiple options for how to proceed. This positions them to capitalize on random opportunities instead of relying on prediction and picking a single winner. If you have six small bets spread across the board, one of them is more likely to hit than putting all your hopes on one bet. Throughout the book, Taleb hammers away on the preferability of experimentation and adaptability over rigid planning. Maintaining a portfolio of small, reversible experiments allows you to capture potential opportunities without risking a catastrophic event destroying your one option.

Dad:

Mostly he's quoting Taleb - doesn't seem that he's added much. Taleb is an EconTalk kind of guy - he's been on the show 10 times including on econlib.

Also Our insane world: murder around the corner from us :(

Mom:

I wasn't suggesting the post was all original material. What interests me is the idea of stress and flexibility being a positive forces.

Let's say together: Gun Control.

Compare the response to the shooting in Australia to the ones in the US. So sad.