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Brittle sounds like fragile. This article reminds me of Nassim Taleb's amazing book, Antifragile. Fragile organizations and systems break from randomness. Robu

Brittle sounds like fragile. This article reminds me of Nassim Taleb's amazing book, Antifragile. Fragile organizations and systems break from randomness. Robust ones are able to resist and stay strong. But Antifragile ones actually benefit from randomness and volatility. I highly recommend the book -- it's highly relevant to startup companies who, rather than shooting for the moon, should protect their downside (at first) and place small bets on numerous 10x activities.

8note 9y ago
Brittle things break with normal force. ductile things break in shear.
lilbobbytables 9y ago
I'm not sure I fully understand that last sentence, could you explain?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cheez 9y ago
  Not OP but I'd guess this means "don't do anything where one bad move takes you out of the game, and invest a little in a lot of long shots"
- tomcooks 9y ago
  Be agile and keep lean. Break things often so you can recover fast from failures and focus on the next test
stouset 9y ago
On the flip side, I can’t recommend against reading the book enough. Your summary is pretty much enough to get the point across, minus endless pages of self-aggrandizement and throwing around preemptive ad hominem attacks toward any group he thinks might disagree with him. I genuinely can’t understand how anyone could have made it through that book.
- Marazan 9y ago
  I dropped the Black Swan after only a few pages as Taleb managed, within those few pages, to simultaneously mock someone for using a personal anecdote to justify a position only to repeatedly use personal anecdotes over the next few pages to justify his position.
  - rdlecler1 9y ago
    It’s a shame he can’t get over his insecurities. The ideas are sound the delivery is aweful.
linkregister 9y ago
I would like to ask you what you found so compelling about Antifragile. When I read the book, I found it simply repeated the claim using various examples that were specific to Taleb's life: [My career as an author is antifragile because I could beat up an economist and I would gain notoriety and increase sales.] However, I was unable to gain any insight into how that applied to typical situations, e.g. investing, career choices, romantic relationships, home purchasing. That is, beyond "do these things in an antifragile way, not a fragile way."
- stouset 9y ago
  He also follows these things up with canned strategies to make your life antifragile, without making any attempt to demonstrate how or why these strategies are actually so. Example: he does not recommend the standard investment strategy of purchasing stock funds and bond funds at a ratio that approximates your tolerance for risk. This is, for some reason, fragile. He recommends putting most of your money into the safest investments available on the market, with the rest of your money going into the riskiest moonshots you can find. This is, for some reason, antifragile. "Unimportant" questions like why and how these strategies are classified as fragile/antifragile and what kinds of investments he considers appropriately safe are left as an exercise to the reader.

8note 9y ago

Brittle things break with normal force. ductile things break in shear.

lilbobbytables 9y ago

I'm not sure I fully understand that last sentence, could you explain?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cheez 9y ago
Not OP but I'd guess this means "don't do anything where one bad move takes you out of the game, and invest a little in a lot of long shots"
tomcooks 9y ago
Be agile and keep lean. Break things often so you can recover fast from failures and focus on the next test

stouset 9y ago

On the flip side, I can’t recommend against reading the book enough. Your summary is pretty much enough to get the point across, minus endless pages of self-aggrandizement and throwing around preemptive ad hominem attacks toward any group he thinks might disagree with him. I genuinely can’t understand how anyone could have made it through that book.

Marazan 9y ago
I dropped the Black Swan after only a few pages as Taleb managed, within those few pages, to simultaneously mock someone for using a personal anecdote to justify a position only to repeatedly use personal anecdotes over the next few pages to justify his position.
- rdlecler1 9y ago
  It’s a shame he can’t get over his insecurities. The ideas are sound the delivery is aweful.

linkregister 9y ago

I would like to ask you what you found so compelling about Antifragile. When I read the book, I found it simply repeated the claim using various examples that were specific to Taleb's life: [My career as an author is antifragile because I could beat up an economist and I would gain notoriety and increase sales.] However, I was unable to gain any insight into how that applied to typical situations, e.g. investing, career choices, romantic relationships, home purchasing. That is, beyond "do these things in an antifragile way, not a fragile way."

stouset 9y ago
He also follows these things up with canned strategies to make your life antifragile, without making any attempt to demonstrate how or why these strategies are actually so. Example: he does not recommend the standard investment strategy of purchasing stock funds and bond funds at a ratio that approximates your tolerance for risk. This is, for some reason, fragile. He recommends putting most of your money into the safest investments available on the market, with the rest of your money going into the riskiest moonshots you can find. This is, for some reason, antifragile. "Unimportant" questions like why and how these strategies are classified as fragile/antifragile and what kinds of investments he considers appropriately safe are left as an exercise to the reader.