17. Be Antifragile by Expanding Awareness
Notice fragility. Then notice opportunity. Then act.
Hello to all my new and old subscribers alike. I’m Zan and my Substack is all about making connections between practical philosophy, technology, economics, health and more.
Welcome to my fourth and final essay in this series exploring Expanded Awareness (a branch of Alexander Technique). Initially this was going to be a 5-part series, but I’ve decided against writing the 5th essay.
In any case, this is the longest essay I’ve written - I’d appreciate your support in liking, sharing, commenting and giving me feedback on this post so that I can continue to improve the way I share my thoughts with you.
To avoid repetition, I won't redefine Expanded Awareness here. I invite you to review the content and podcasts that I shared with you on my first post in the series - Stack 13 of Insight Axis. Moving forwards, I assume you broadly understand the ideas around Expanded Awareness.
This week I want to talk about Antifragility.
As usual, we will start with definitions, and then talk through
Defining antifragility
Having an antifragile mindset
How Expanding Awareness facilitates antifragility
Defining antifragility
Things that break in response to stress are fragile.
Things that don't break in response to stress are robust.
Most of us think the opposite of fragile is robust.
But what about things that gain from stress?
These things are antifragile.
The term "antifragile" was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his influential book of the same name. Published in 2012, the concept of antifragility has garnered widespread attention, but unfortunately, it has been both misused and abused, particularly by residents of Silicon Valley. These days, Taleb often takes to Twitter to aggressively correct those who misinterpret his ideas. While his book is entertaining and covers a wide range of topics, it intentionally lacks a straightforward structure (to force book reviewers to read the whole book, according to Taleb). Rather than explicitly defining the concept, Taleb illustrates how antifragility manifests across various domains such as finance, economics, health, and philosophy.
It's also difficult to untangle the concept of antifragility from Taleb's related works. So the best way to see how antifragility works is to summarise each of his books and illustrate the overall thesis.
Fooled By Randomness: The world is more random than we think. In fact, the randomness of the world is wilder than the artificial randomness we often create to model the world. The classic aphorism that Taleb quotes to make his point is we should “never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep”. Our statistical models often perform a sleight of hand, swapping out the real-life, "random randomness" for a tamer, "non-random randomness".1
The Black Swan: Not only is the world wildly random, but some of these unpredictable events are of incredible magnitude. These types of events are called "Black Swans”, and they happen more often than we think. The financial crash of 1987 is an example of a negative Black Swan. The rise of the Internet is an example of a positive Black Swan. Since the past does not equal the future (i.e. the problem of induction), we will never truly be able to predict when these freak events occur.
Antifragile: In a world that's wildly random and full of Black Swans, the way to thrive is not by trying to predict the the unpredictable. Instead, you thrive by being antifragile. Antifragility is manifested in a 2 step process2.
First, survive negative Black Swans by removing fragility (see via negativa in the footnotes).
Then, be open to opportunities from equally unpredictable positive Black Swans: only after solving the problem of surviving negative Black Swans should you look to benefit from positive Positive Black swans. After all, positioning your self for big wins is meaningless if you could be wiped out at any given time. This is the concept of antifragility. This is how you thrive in a world of unpredictable chaos, and gain from disorder.
Skin In The Game: This principle safeguards against the risk of catastrophic failures. It ensures that individuals have personal stakes in the decisions they make. This concept serves as a remedy against reckless risk-taking in a nonlinear world riddled with Black Swans. It’s also is the initial step towards achieving antifragility in decision-making.
So we can see that the concept of antifragility comes from the context of living in a world filled with unpredictable stressors, but equally unpredictable upside. And being antifragile is not about predicting when these events occur, but rather about how to survive and capitalise on them.
Having an antifragile mindset
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