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Depends how deeply Taleb understands his own theories. You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just ex
by nostrademons 4y ago
Depends how deeply Taleb understands his own theories.
You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just expected, but actively welcomed and designed for. Distributed systems engineers understand this intuitively; any highly reliable system is constantly failing internally, but the system is set up with multiple independent paths to success, such that failure just routes traffic to the non-failing components.
Silicon Valley as a whole is also set up according to this principle. Startups are supposed to fail; big companies are supposed to fail; individual municipalities are supposed to fail. The genius of Silicon Valley is in rapid experimentation and routing all the raw materials for these entities into new configurations that are succeeding. When a giant like Sun Microsystems or Western Digital goes under, the engineers all quit and work for Google. When Google goes under, they'll work for whatever the hot company of 2030 is. Same goes for capital (the early investors in Google have long since cashed out and are actively looking for the next big thing, while the bagholders will be retail investors in the rest of the country who don't know any better) and geography (the center of Silicon Valley has historically moved around between roughly Scotts Valley to San Francisco on a 5-10 year timescale).
And California laws & culture are setup to encourage this, with the ban on non-compete agreements, lax enforcement of trade secret laws, people always searching for the next big thing, customers willing to try the next big thing, lawyers/accountants/engineers willing to work for stock, etc.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago> lax enforcement of trade secret laws Then how did Anthony Levandowski end up in prison?
- nostrademons 4y agoHe didn't. He was sentenced to 18 months but never actually served; he was pardoned by Trump before then, and is currently serving as CEO of Pronto, a new autonomous vehicle startup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski
- Dracophoenix 4y agoThen I'll rephrase my statement: how did he end up convicted in a state with supposedly lax enforcement of trade secret laws?
- nostrademons 4y agoYou'll note that Alsup's comment at sentencing was "this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale." He downloaded 10G of confidential files from his employer onto a thumb drive and then founded a startup that was immediately acquired by one of his employer's biggest competitors, with evidence that the startup was only founded as a front for the theft of trade secrets. Those who are less brazen not only don't end up in court, but they often end up with $100B+ companies. You don't see any prison time for the Traitorous Eight who left Shockley to found Fairchild, Moore & Noyce who left Fairchild to found Intel, Jerry Sanders who left Fairchild to start AMD, Morris Chang leaving Texas Instruments to found TSMC, Marc Andreesen leaving Mosaic to start Netscape, or Steve Jobs's visit to Xerox Parc to see the Alto and bring all its innovations to the Lisa & Macintosh.
- sokoloff 4y agoIf Xerox is demoing the Alto to thousands of people every year, it’s obvious that they’re not treating it as a trade secret.
- danans 4y ago> how did he end up convicted in a state with supposedly lax enforcement of trade secret laws? Because he was convicted of a federal crime, not a state crime, which is also why Trump had the ability to pardon him.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> You build antifragile systems by creating networks where the failure of any one component is not just expected, but actively welcomed and designed for. Distributed systems engineers understand this intuitively; any highly reliable system is constantly failing internally, but the system is set up with multiple independent paths to success, such that failure just routes traffic to the non-failing components. Antifragility is benefitting from things breaking, not just coping with things breaking.
- danans 4y ago> Antifragility is benefitting from things breaking, not just coping with things breaking. Coping with things breaking while fragile entities are collapsing is benefiting in the relative sense.
- robertlagrant 4y agoIt's not. You're not benefiting from the break. You might be unaffected, but you're not benefitting.