Everything Nassim Nicholas Taleb has said about antifragility
Taleb argues that the true opposite of fragile is not robust but antifragile — things that need and gain from volatility, stressors, and disorder. Since fragility shows up as accelerating, concave harm, he prescribes convex trial and error, barbell strategies, and improvement by removal, warning that suppressing volatility in organic systems only stockpiles hidden risk.
6 points · 2 appearances · 2013
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5 points · 3 appearances · 2013–2020 · changed view
“The third point is skin in the game. When you're a banker, all right, and you have the upside, no downside, what are you going to do? Create the maximum number of loans that don't blow up often, right, and collect your bonuses. It's like selling out of the money options, and then of course you blow up. Now how do I link this to fragility? It's very simple: fragility is short volatility, you see, and selling an out of the money option is short a certain class of volatility. And what you have is, a banker has the option, he has the upside, and if you pay taxes every April 15 you're paying for his downside. That's it. They may make money, it still covers his downside. So this to me is not capitalism, it's misunderstanding of basic rules.”
8 points · 7 appearances · 2019–2025 · changed view
“Wealth is the thing that you really want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Wealth is the factory that with the robots as cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program that's running at night that's serving other customers. Wealth is even money in the bank that is being reinvested into other assets and into other businesses. Even a house can be a form of wealth, because you can rent it out — although that's probably a lower use of productivity — but land and actually doing some commercial enterprise. So my definition of wealth is much more businesses and assets that can earn while you sleep.”
5 points · 5 appearances · 2024–2026 · changed view
“The observation is that don't die is the most played game by everyone all over the world every day. You and I breathe every few seconds, we look both ways before we cross the street, we all play don't die. So it's played more than capitalism, it's played more than any religion. It's the most played game in the world.”
6 points · 4 appearances · 2007–2020 · changed view
“Well, you can say everybody knows that. Well, I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.”