Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.”

Taleb claims that the world is set up as a stage where Black Swans constantly defy our understanding of the world and our attempts to capture its meaning by means of prediction. Here, he expresses his desire to be happy, even in the face of such uncertainty and ambiguity.

“In accord with the practitioner’s ethos, the rule in this book is as follows: I eat my own cooking.”

In this passage, Taleb emphasizes the importance of practitioners being able to personally use the skills or techniques they advocate for others. The implicit idea here is that credibility and effectiveness come from personal experience and application, rather than just theoretical knowledge or expertise.

“Recall that the fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn’t care too much.”

Things that are fragile desire stability, while the antifragile fundamentally thrive on chaos and disorder. The robust, on the other hand, is resilient and adaptable, less concerned with either extreme.