6 ms·

Random note: Antifragility is called hormesis in living organisms, a concept that existed since the 1950s when the wrong dose - too low - of herbicides made the

by fasteo 2y ago

Random note: Antifragility is called hormesis in living organisms, a concept that existed since the 1950s when the wrong dose - too low - of herbicides made the plants stronger.

Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
Mechanical engineering uses the term system resilience. I must admit I don't like antifragility, which sounds like a novlang and is poorly defined.
- dmichulke 2y ago
  Resilience is not the same, a system is anti-fragile if it gets stronger under stress. Resilience is just "not getting weaker".
  - K0balt 2y ago
    Pedantically-not pedantic, but isn’t resilience the ability to quickly recover?
    - m0llusk 2y ago
      The first graphic in the paper has a good illustration of the differences between fragility, robustness, resilience, adaptiveness, and antifragility: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-024-00014-y/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-024-00014-y/figures/1
    - fuzzfactor 2y ago
      When enduring successive hurricanes the most worthwhile effort might be to improve antifragility on more of a continuous basis than even recovery itself. You can definitely benefit by increasing your antifragility in the face of a second hurricane long before recovery from the first hurricane has been very well completed at all, no matter how focused the recovery effort. I never thought people needed a new term to be coined for this, but it doesn't sound so bad when you think about it. It's just one of the things you inherently know your whole life.
      - soulofmischief 2y ago
        I think you mean resilient or robust, not antifragile. I know of no building which gets stronger under/after hurricane force winds.
        guerrilla 2y ago
        No, but the community and relevant economy can.
        fuzzfactor 2y ago
        Exactly. Plus the individual may have to make progress without a community or economy to fall back on. Whether you have a building or not.
        taeric 2y ago
        But you can do that with a simple growth model? Larger systems can already withstand larger shocks that would have been fatal when they were smaller. Antifragile is a bit odd, the idea is supposed to be things that get stronger because of the shocks. Think how your muscles grow specifically from micro tears. In that regard, they must have resistance to grow. Though, I think that also misses on some of the definition? Really, the more I try to defend the idea, the more I question it. :(
        guerrilla 2y ago
        I'm not sure why you're talking about the size of systems, maybe I missed something. I think the point is that the systems become stronger with negative stimuli. The community and relevant economy become stronger only because of the hurricane. They would not have done it otherwise.
        taeric 2y ago
        I meant only that larger town/cities can take hurricanes a bit better than smaller ones can. Same reason that large trees weather the storm better than smaller trees do. If you increase the size of the system/thing, then it necessitates larger negative stimuli in most cases. Consider the size of a wave that would topple a canoe versus standard war ships. At any rate, this is a hard analogy to stick with as it isn't the hurricane that makes things stronger. It is being ready for the hurricane. And, yeah, you can argue that getting hit by hurricanes is why the city was prepared, but that is kind of silly. Are non-coastal towns that don't have to evacuate for large storms somehow weaker than the ones that do? Not really, they are prepared for other shocks. Again, muscle growth would kind of follow an antifragile model. In that you have to have some resistance for most growth. Maybe the old SR-71 was an even better example. Literally needed the resistance of flight so that it wouldn't leak. The saying for it was the faster it went, the faster it could go.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Resilience is the ability of not having a (catastrophic? depends on who is defining) failure when the situation changes. Resistance is the ability of not requiring any adjustment to avoid a failure when the situation changes. That antifragility term, that yeah, is the same as hormesis is the ability of increasing your fitness when the situation changes (in unpredictable ways). A machine that has very thick parts is resistant. A machine with redundant parts that you can fix is resilient. A machine whose builder is always learning from failure and improving is antifragil.
    - K0balt 2y ago
      Ok I looked it up. It is to withstand or recover quickly, or the ability to spring back into shape; elasticity. (Oxford American)
  - dwighttk 2y ago
    Or even getting weaker slower than others
- baq 2y ago
  It is something that Taleb proposed and given a name for - given 'fragility', 'antifragility' makes sense, since it isn't resilience (he discusses that). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility contains a mathematical heuristic of the term applied to some function.
0134340 2y ago
That's what immediately came to mind when reading OP's comment. He's basically describing the action of perturbing a system just enough with a weak force that it 'innoculates', for lack of a better word, itself against similar but stronger forces.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  So in a nutshell, making sure our robots are vaccinated against errors.
rramadass 2y ago
This presentation by Todd Becker titled How Hormesis Works: The Biology of Beneficial Adaptation to Stress is a great introduction to the subject with some practical advice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDm_guQfESA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDm_guQfESA Also see his Desirable Difficulties: Using Hormesis to Learn More Effectively - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc0PZe08Ues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc0PZe08Ues

by fasteo 2y ago

Random note: Antifragility is called hormesis in living organisms, a concept that existed since the 1950s when the wrong dose - too low - of herbicides made the plants stronger.

Beretta_Vexee 2y ago

Mechanical engineering uses the term system resilience. I must admit I don't like antifragility, which sounds like a novlang and is poorly defined.

dmichulke 2y ago
Resilience is not the same, a system is anti-fragile if it gets stronger under stress. Resilience is just "not getting weaker".
- K0balt 2y ago
  Pedantically-not pedantic, but isn’t resilience the ability to quickly recover?
  - m0llusk 2y ago
    The first graphic in the paper has a good illustration of the differences between fragility, robustness, resilience, adaptiveness, and antifragility: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-024-00014-y/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-024-00014-y/figures/1
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    When enduring successive hurricanes the most worthwhile effort might be to improve antifragility on more of a continuous basis than even recovery itself. You can definitely benefit by increasing your antifragility in the face of a second hurricane long before recovery from the first hurricane has been very well completed at all, no matter how focused the recovery effort. I never thought people needed a new term to be coined for this, but it doesn't sound so bad when you think about it. It's just one of the things you inherently know your whole life.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      I think you mean resilient or robust, not antifragile. I know of no building which gets stronger under/after hurricane force winds.
      - guerrilla 2y ago
        No, but the community and relevant economy can.
        fuzzfactor 2y ago
        Exactly. Plus the individual may have to make progress without a community or economy to fall back on. Whether you have a building or not.
        taeric 2y ago
        But you can do that with a simple growth model? Larger systems can already withstand larger shocks that would have been fatal when they were smaller. Antifragile is a bit odd, the idea is supposed to be things that get stronger because of the shocks. Think how your muscles grow specifically from micro tears. In that regard, they must have resistance to grow. Though, I think that also misses on some of the definition? Really, the more I try to defend the idea, the more I question it. :(
        guerrilla 2y ago
        I'm not sure why you're talking about the size of systems, maybe I missed something. I think the point is that the systems become stronger with negative stimuli. The community and relevant economy become stronger only because of the hurricane. They would not have done it otherwise.
        taeric 2y ago
        I meant only that larger town/cities can take hurricanes a bit better than smaller ones can. Same reason that large trees weather the storm better than smaller trees do. If you increase the size of the system/thing, then it necessitates larger negative stimuli in most cases. Consider the size of a wave that would topple a canoe versus standard war ships. At any rate, this is a hard analogy to stick with as it isn't the hurricane that makes things stronger. It is being ready for the hurricane. And, yeah, you can argue that getting hit by hurricanes is why the city was prepared, but that is kind of silly. Are non-coastal towns that don't have to evacuate for large storms somehow weaker than the ones that do? Not really, they are prepared for other shocks. Again, muscle growth would kind of follow an antifragile model. In that you have to have some resistance for most growth. Maybe the old SR-71 was an even better example. Literally needed the resistance of flight so that it wouldn't leak. The saying for it was the faster it went, the faster it could go.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Resilience is the ability of not having a (catastrophic? depends on who is defining) failure when the situation changes. Resistance is the ability of not requiring any adjustment to avoid a failure when the situation changes. That antifragility term, that yeah, is the same as hormesis is the ability of increasing your fitness when the situation changes (in unpredictable ways). A machine that has very thick parts is resistant. A machine with redundant parts that you can fix is resilient. A machine whose builder is always learning from failure and improving is antifragil.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    Ok I looked it up. It is to withstand or recover quickly, or the ability to spring back into shape; elasticity. (Oxford American)
- dwighttk 2y ago
  Or even getting weaker slower than others
baq 2y ago
It is something that Taleb proposed and given a name for - given 'fragility', 'antifragility' makes sense, since it isn't resilience (he discusses that). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility contains a mathematical heuristic of the term applied to some function.

0134340 2y ago

That's what immediately came to mind when reading OP's comment. He's basically describing the action of perturbing a system just enough with a weak force that it 'innoculates', for lack of a better word, itself against similar but stronger forces.

moffkalast 2y ago
So in a nutshell, making sure our robots are vaccinated against errors.

rramadass 2y ago

This presentation by Todd Becker titled How Hormesis Works: The Biology of Beneficial Adaptation to Stress is a great introduction to the subject with some practical advice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDm_guQfESA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDm_guQfESA Also see his Desirable Difficulties: Using Hormesis to Learn More Effectively - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc0PZe08Ues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc0PZe08Ues