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No, I replied to your full post. Just wanted to point out that your examples showed stability, not antifragility.

• defrost 2y ago
  My initial motivation was to point out the authors likely weren't native in English. I meandered onwards to waffle about the nature of what they were describing, which to my mind at least begins with a notion of stability, in pursuit of a better succint opening line (which I don't have). You've said: Fragility and antifragility aren't about stability (returning to equilibria), but gains or losses after perturbation, which is related to convexity/concavity. I've said: Reading further, they want more; that repeated perturbations should deliver benefit, that systems in an warped egg carton configuration can be annealed to reveal an optimal point by vigorous shaking slowly reduced in degree. We likely both agree that an anti-fragile system should not spiral out of control. I assume when you refer to "convexity/concavity" you mean at a scale greater than local, at the scale of the warp in an egg carton as I made reference. My principal gripe with such discussion, as I said, was I don't see much that is new other than language over what was discussed in the mid 1980s .. but perhaps I've not read enough. The downvoting of your comment is poor form.
  • wenc 2y ago
    Thanks for engaging. You're right in that the ideas are not new, but I feel the language and the framing somewhat is. I'm not sure if you've come across N. N. Taleb's work -- he's the guy who coined the term "antifragility" = things things that benefit from perturbation. In it he argues that the antifragility is a property of systems that satisfy Jensen's inequality [1]. If the system's function f is convex, then: E[f(X)] > f(E[X]) X is a random variable representing perturbations to the system, and f(.) is the system's response. If Jensen's inequality is satisfied (which is only true if f is convex), the inequality tells us that the average response to variable inputs (E[f(X)]) is greater than the response to the average input f(E[X]). This means that the system benefits more from variability in the input than it would from a constant, average input. Antifragile systems, in that sense, are not conventionally "stable". Taleb describes a spectrum: Fragile -> Robust -> Antifragile Stable systems often fall into the robust category -- they can withstand stress without breaking, but they don't necessarily improve from it. It's a really subtle nuance. An example from life: the young person who takes no risks, has a stable job, does well enough but isn't really interested in moving or taking on new opportunities. They'll never make it big. This is stability. But the young person who starts a startup and keeps taking risks, iterating and pivoting. If they win, they win big. If they lose, they only lose a few years of their early life. This is antifragility, and it is actually a departure from stability. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen%27s_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen%27s_inequality
    • _yb2s 2y ago
      > You're right in that the ideas are not new It's not just an old scientific idea, but a popular idea discussed at length by the ancient greeks: Talebs whole thing is taking ideas from ancient philosophy, especially stoicism and translating them into rigorous math concepts for modern applications and audience. He's also obsessed with "The Lindy Effect" which implies that older ideas are generally also likely to be more valuable and lastingly useful.