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Loading... Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
![]() No current Talk conversations about this book. ![]() ![]() "The hottest thinker in the world". (Bryan Appleyard, "Sunday Times"). In "The Black Swan", Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. What's more, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call "efficient" is not efficient at all? Why should you write your resignation letter before starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? "Antifragile" is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: the antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to problems of uncertainty, probability, and knowledge and has led three careers around this focus, as a businessman-trader, a philosophical essayist, and an academic researcher. Although he now spends most of his time working in intense seclusion in his study, in the manner of independent scholars, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute. His main subject matter is "decision making under opacity," that is, a map and a protocol on how we should live in a world we don't understand. His books "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" have been published in thirty-three languages. Taleb believes that prizes, honorary degrees, awards, and cer Ágætis kenning sem Taleb setur fram og útskýrir í þessari bók. Antifragile þýðir í raun að hagnast á hörmungum þar sem þú ert viðbúinn slæmum uppákomum og getur unnið úr þeim á hagkvæman máta. Taleb ver bókinni í að útskýra hugtakið aftur og aftur við mismunandi aðstæður í samfélaginu og efnahag. Dálítið þreytandi tugga er líður á lesturinn. Vor langer Zeit begann ich schon mal damit, das Buch in englischer Sprache zu lesen, nachdem ich vom schwarzen Schwan recht begeistert war. Allerdings stellte sich dies dann doch anspruchsvoller dar, als erwartet und so ließ ich die Aufgabe sausen, und das Wissen um die geplante Lektüre Buches segelte dank Nutzung der Kindle-Ausgabe völlig unproblematisch ins digitale Nirwana.... Vor kurzem erinnerte ich mich daran, dass "Antifragile" zwischenzeitlich auch auf deutscher Sprache vorhanden sein müsste und erwarb ein Exemplar, um es letztlich doch komplett zu lesen. Das ging auf Deutsch wesentlich leichter und zudem recht kurzweilig. Kernaussage des Buches ist, dass manche Dinge davon profitieren, dass sie zufälligen, ungeplanten Schocks ausgesetzt werden. Da unsere Welt und damit unser Leben massiv von unvorhersagbaren Ereignissen beeinflusst werden (das ist quasi der Inhalt des "Schwarzen Schwans"), sollten wir darauf achten, unsere Umwelt und Systeme so zu gestalten, dass sie davon profitieren, wenn nicht alles nach Plan läuft. Klingt einleuchtend und überzeugend und so lesen sich die knapp 700 Seiten gut weg. Was mich mit fortschreitender Lesedauer jedoch etwas irritierte, war der flapsige Ton des Autors: Ein bißchen weniger Singsang des Hohelieds der eigenen Fähigkeiten und nicht ganz so viele fiktiven Fat Tony-Anekdoten hätten dem Buch in meinen Augen keinen Abbruch getan.
Sometimes Nassim Nicholas Taleb is led astray by his contrarianism, but then that is his point: If you don't take risks, you don't get results. This is a bold, entertaining, clever book, richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides. Does it achieve its goal, or does it cram and twist the world on to a Procrustean bed of one theory, thereby somewhat contradicting its own empirical and pragmatic outlook? I am not sure. I will have to read it again. And again. Belongs to SeriesIncerto (4)
Business.
Philosophy.
Nonfiction.
Economics.
HTML:Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb??s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don??t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls ??antifragile? is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call ??efficient? not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb??s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile ??Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.???The Economist ??A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our li No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumNassim Nicholas Taleb's book Antifragile was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)155.2Philosophy and Psychology Psychology Developmental And Differential Psychology Individual PsychologyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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