Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s background as a former options trader and statistician lends a unique sense of real-life credibility to the arguments in Antifragile, the fourth book in his Incerto series. Throughout this series of books, Taleb weaves a thematic thread that revolves mostly around risk and uncertainty, studying the seemingly random factors that catalyze major societal events. Taleb’s background in finance is central not only to the ideas in Antifragile, but also to the other books in the series (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, and Skin in the Game).

Taleb’s experiences as an options trader led him to develop the concept of “Black Swans,” his term for rare, unexpected events that have a profound impact on global events, including financial markets. The book, The Black Swan, became one of his best-known. It, like the other two prior books in the Incerto series, develops a strong critique of traditional risk management approaches. Taleb was interested in the role of unpredictability—the way that unexpected occurrences can shake up systems, whether they are economic, political, or something else.

The 2008 financial crisis (aka “The Great Recession”) was widely seen to validate Taleb’s claims about so-called Black Swans. This set the stage for Taleb to write Antifragile. To some extent, Taleb conceived Antifragile as a summary of the earlier books and as a capstone, although it, too, was eventually topped off by another book, Skin in the Game. Antifragile also responded to those critics who felt that the earlier works had a lot to say by way of criticism without putting forward a positive approach of his own. With Antifragile, Taleb deepens his argument that many risk models and theories are based on flawed assumptions about the nature of uncertainty and randomness and goes on to present a positive account of something that can but pursued, namely antifragility, a more adaptable and resilient way of approaching economic and social systems that seeks to incorporate uncertainty in beneficial ways.

Taleb develops his arguments about antifragility and resilience by drawing on a wide range of sources and examples, from ancient Greek philosophy to wines to contemporary finance. His books characteristically reflect his broad and eclectic interests in fields as diverse as philosophy, economics, history, and psychology, and his equally characteristic penchant for self-display and unconventional ideas. This has led book reviewers such as Michio Kakutani at the New York Times to lament Taleb’s “arrogant” authorial presence and to criticize Antifragile, in particular, as in need of a good editor. Nevertheless, even his critics recognize that Taleb’s central ideas withstand scrutiny and are valuable.

Taleb is critical of the ways that technology and globalization have led to cultural homogenization and the erosion of local knowledge, and he is critical, too, of the “expert” culture that has emerged in many fields, arguing that experts are often associated with marketing techniques and focused on “delivering the cheapest possible product that meets their specifications” (403). In a similar vein, Taleb is critical of the way that the development of modern sciences, universities, and professions have produced compartmentalization and over-specialization. In his own thinking, he deliberately tries to model a different sort of “expertise” that is less predictable and more eclectic.