Antifragile - Nassim Taleb

It took me quite some time to read this book and it will take quite some time to structure my thoughts about it. But this is the kind of book that is best read slowly and by pausing and pondering as you read. And the main reason I have started writing reviews/summaries is to force myself to reflect better on what I read. Summarizing a concept is evidently far more demanding than solely grasping it.

This book lays down an idea, that is rather simple to understand at a basic level, but its deeper reasoning and implications can be pondered about forever. In the final chapter, Taleb suggests not a summary, but a central argument that extracts the very essence of the book. Namely,

Everything gains or loses from volatility, Fragility is what loses from volatility and uncertainty.

This is like a generator, Taleb explains. The full book can be seen as a derivation of that sentence. But the reader, to understand and appriciate it, will have to read the entire book.

This text lists the idea’s that had the biggest impact on me and that I carry with me after having read this book. Also, how I implement them.

The Antifragile human body

Our body grows stronger when challenged. in other words, it is antifragile to random stressors. This is of course only true up to a certain point. People have realized that in sports, especially weight lifting. You push yourself to lift as heavy as you can, so that next time you will be able to lift even heavier. But for some reason, we fail to apply the same logic to other things about body. Here are some examples

Food
First of all, what should we eat? The only “baseline” we could possibly motivate is: “What our ancestors ate”. It is quite a simple rule and I believe it is a good one. The reasoning is simply that is has survived the test of time. Meat, fish or blueberries cannot be significantly harmful since we have eaten it forever. If it were, we would have developed disgust for it or culture would have made us know about it. Instead, we have developed an appetit for it. Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein went deeper into this subject in the book A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century where they further argued that one should consider ones ancestor’s recent origin as well. So that if you are italian, italian food will be healthy, and if you are chinese, chinese will be healthy. So that is what surely is healthy. Other things could be healthy too, but it must be proven. Why? Because somewhat of the same reasoning as “Innocent until proven guilty”. No one needs to prove that Coke Zero is bad for you. Instead, you would need to prove that is not bad. Regarding drinks, Taleb’s rule is to drink no liquid that is not at least a thousand years old - so its fitness has been tested. So for him, nothing but water, wine and coffee. And I can imagine he follows this rule faithfully. My impression is, also based on podcasts I listened to, that he truly puts his ideas into practice.

What I actually wanted to write about here, is the idea of randomness in food intake. Taleb is convinced that “We are antifragile to randomness in food delivery and composition”. Arguing that deprivation of food, or certain nutritients, is a stressor. And that we can gain from. This is where fasting comes in. Some fast for religous reasons and some fast to “cleanse” the body, whatever that means. But fasting is simply good because it stresses the body. We often hear that a Balanced meal is important and that breakfast, lunch and dinner should be had regularly every day. But that is not true. What we need is more randomness. Skip breakfast sometimes, don’t eat meat for two weeks, fast an entire day, eat massive amounts of berries a certain week etc. This is problably more how our ancestors lived. Sometimes food was scarce and sometimes plenty. The types of Nutritions varied. And I don’t think many had breakfast the first thing after you wake up. You probably had to work a bit for it.

Taleb argues further that meat should be had very randomly, whereas vegetables could be had more regularly. This is beacuse herbivores must eat every day, but carnivores must hunt their prey, which often fails. A lion succeeds less than 20 percent of their hunts. So it must be without food for days, and from time to time it gets a feast.

I believe all this to be true and the reasoning is very logical. So to summarize: eat what your ancestors ate, and have a more random intake of food and composition. I mostly apply this myself by skipping meals entirely sometimes. Eating less of the sweat stuff is more difficult though. I realized that I had never really fasted in my entire life. Not a single day without eating something. I have now, and it was hard. But how delicous the first food afterwards was.

Dressing for weather
With similar reasoning as above, I let myself get cold or wet sometimes. Or rather, I don’t worry as much whether I will be dressed poorly for the current weather. Freezing cold or soaking wet, my body will enjoy the randomness. Also, the warm shower afterwards is awesome. Of course, I do this up to a limit. I would not expose myself to risk of getting permanent damages.

This also has the positive side effect of not having to think as much about what clothes to wear, since I will be fine either way.

Also, I enjoy going to the extremes. Intense Sauna bathing and dipping in ice water or snow.

Sickness
If I can manage without painkillers, I avoid them.

Detect absence of skin in the game

To have “Skin in the game” means to be exposed to the downside when wanting the upside. Is is something positive and should be considered ethical. A couple of examples are: a captain on a cruise ship that “goes down” with his ship if it sinks; a pilot flying an aircraft; an entrepreneur investing his own capital in his startup.

Some examples of professions not having their skin in the game are: Bankers, corporate excecutives, theoreticians and journalists who “analyze” and “predict”. These will keep the upside, but transfer the downside to other. The journalist for example, is praised when making correct predictions, but is not punished proportionally when his predictions are wrong. To use the terminology in the book, absence of skin in the game means that you are making yourself antifragile at the expense of others. Therefore it should be considered highly unethical.

I truly recommend everyone to be aware of this phenomenon. Taleb also wrote an entire book with the title “Skin in the game”. I am looking forward to reading it.

A rule of thumb is to never trust anyone that does have their skin in the game. I would not board a plane if the pilot flying it would not be on it. Would you?

Academia

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Iatrogenics and Naive interventionsim

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Via negativa

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