6 ms·

Can we go back to using the word "robust"? Neologisms and jargon are anti-good.

bahmutov 12y ago
Anti-fragile and robust are two different concepts as defined by Nassim Taleb. Anti-fragile software is exposed to low level stress, and evolves to survive it. Robust software is a static snapshot. http://bahmutov.calepin.co/review-antifragile-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb.html http://bahmutov.calepin.co/review-antifragile-by-nassim-nich...
- geographomics 12y ago
  To use an analogy, it sounds roughly like the distinction between adaptive and innate immune systems in vertebrates.
- bluecalm 12y ago
  It's learning from errors and failures or evolving or self-correcting. The only real function that neologism serve is to ensure that there are several pages to fill with easy writing about examples of things that are robust and things that are fragile. Really, when reading about concept of learning from mistakes (or in case of software self-correcting) not many would find examples of fragile things interesting. Just because you are defining neologism which have perfectly good equivalents already doesn't make it any more compelling. You just fill paragraphs with boring fluff and make reader wonder why the hell you are not jumping to the point already. This is unfortunately also visible in the paper from OP as, following Taleb, about half of it is concerned with giving murky definition of completely redundant term and then telling the reader what it is and what is it not with numerous examples. The author would do well to remove all the references to anti-fragile and Taleb and substitute those with some history of self-correcting software. Maybe try to research who first wrote about it or tried to construct working code. You know, like some information and background about the concept instead of redefining it and then doing a session of mental masturbation over it.
  - graeme 12y ago
    Self-correcting isn't quite the right term, though it's closer than robust. Something antifragile won't necessarily self-correct if left alone. Instead, antifragile refers to something that improves when subject to disorder and shocks. It's a new word for a concept we can understand, but have no word for. Lacking a word for something severely impairs our ability to talk about it. To validly criticize the word, one should first show that they understand what's meant by it, and propose an existing term that captures that. None of the critiques in this thread have done that.
- doctorstupid 12y ago
  Regardless, 'anti-fragile' sounds horrible. I think that resilient is a better word for the job.
  - lukifer 12y ago
    The concept is distinct from resiliency. It is the idea of a system that actually benefits from small amounts of stress or entropy. One example Taleb gives is bone: the micro-fractures created by the normal stresses of standing and walking force the bone to grow stronger; whereas astronauts in prolonged zero-G are at risk for gradual bone loss due to the lack of this stress. That said, it's probably not the best word, but the realities of path dependence make it very difficult to coin new words out of whole cloth. An equally arbitrary neologism like "hyper-resiliency" would have probably made just as much sense.
    - mpyne 12y ago
      Might I suggest "hormetic", which comes from similar hypotheses of biological processes? E.g. the idea that low levels of radiation might even be beneficial overall by forcing your body to continuously use strong healing mechanisms is known as radiation hormesis.
      - lukifer 12y ago
        It may not be as "sticky" to laypeople, but that's a super-cool word, thanks for sharing!
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
coldtea 12y ago
Especially those created by hacks like Taleb, who rose into prominence by devoting a whole book to "unpredictable" events, full of trivial observations and repetition.
- eruditely 12y ago
  He is vindicated already, it's time to move on.
- Udo 12y ago
  It's kind of offtopic, but I can't help feeling a bit relieved that I'm not the only one who read this highly recommended book and got increasingly confused how this heap of triviality and self-congratulation managed to be so successful. Taleb certainly out-gladwelled the other contenders in this category. I am convinced the success of this book can't be due to completely organic factors (at least that's what I hope), but it's here now and however derivative and trite Taleb's contributions to the subject matter might be, he managed to claim ownership for the entire field. The result is it becomes impossible to publicly talk about robustness and fault tolerance without invoking him. If you as an author steer around him, someone from your audience will bring it up and it will be much worse than if you had included the mandatory nod in his direction right from the start. The book has also managed to create a somewhat fertile ground for the subject in lay people and it seems wasteful not to capitalize on that basis when addressing a group of people. So yes, I expect this book will be referenced as the gold standard for the rest of our lifetime.
  - api 12y ago
    I too have had this impression. For a long time I've been very curious about how this kind of king-making occurs and what the underlying political machinery looks like. I don't buy that it's random or organic. Being a middle class hick from the American Midwest and having attended a regular-tier non-coastal school, it's a bit outside my domain... though I did live in Boston for a while and work a lot around the MIT/Harvard orbit. That gave me a definite sense that there's a caste system at work but not exactly how it works or how one goes about gaining entry (or is tapped for entry). Being admitted to the Right School seems to usually be a prerequisite, though there are exceptions. I'm not saying Taleb is a fool. He's certainly very interesting, but he's not the only thinker in this field by any stretch of the imagination. People have been talking about this stuff since back in the 60s when it was called cybernetics. Then they called it complexity, dynamical systems, evolvable systems, and so forth. Taleb might have added some things, but he did not found the field any more than Stephen Wolfram founded the study of cellular automata. I'm not comparing Wolfram and Taleb. Actually I think they're opposites. Wolfram has a lot of money and a big ego (probably bigger than Taleb's), and he certainly is very smart, but his work doesn't seem to have received the nod of the establishment while Taleb's obviously has. Wolfram is more like a tycoon trying to buy his way into a circle that... well... <sniff sniff>... those who are truly in the club would never stoop that low. Who makes these decisions? If you look at Taleb's background, he certainly has gone through or at least been affiliated with all the right schools. The top-tier (Ivy League if you're in the USA) academic network is (in my opinion) the most powerful aristocratic network in the modern world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Academic_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Academic_... I think what fascinates me the most about the aristocratic networks that run through the top-tier universities and their corporate and governmental orbits is how silent they are. You can make kings with millions in paid PR too, but that's noisy and conveys at least some impression that the PR is indeed being "driven." The real power networks of society seem able to make kings with a wink and a nod and it looks completely organic, often giving the impression that these individuals rose to prominence on pure merit and hard work. Again not saying these individuals don't have merit or that they don't work hard-- I'm sure they do both. But so do millions and millions of other people, and they never get the kind of success the "tapped" or "knighted" see. P. S. You'd probably find Peter Thiel interesting. He's known for being a skeptic of the whole "fooled by randomness" line of thinking. Search for his name on YouTube and select ">20 minutes" length and you can find many interesting talks. I'm looking forward to his book: http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296 http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804... I don't always agree with Thiel, but even when I don't he's one of those people who always makes me think.
agumonkey 12y ago
In my understanding, robust systems know how to deal with failures, while anti-fragile gain energy with failures.
- graeme 12y ago
  This is correct. We didn't have a word for it before. Robust is not the same thing as antifragile. Those criticism the term should first say either: 1. What existing word means the same as antifragile, or 2. Why they think robust is equivalent to antifragile
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
api 12y ago
Coining a neologism is an act of linguistic imperialism that helps to link your identity and body of work -- as originator of the neologism -- to a field. It's worse in some scientific fields than others. I spent a lot of time studying emergence, oh wait I mean complexity, oh wait I mean dissipative structures, self-organizing systems, class IV cellular automata, dynamical systems, chaordic systems, oh screw it. It's really bad in that field. Things whose parts give rise to second-order behaviors that are not obvious from the structure of the parts themselves. Yeah that.

Anti-fragile and robust are two different concepts as defined by Nassim Taleb. Anti-fragile software is exposed to low level stress, and evolves to survive it. Robust software is a static snapshot. http://bahmutov.calepin.co/review-antifragile-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb.html http://bahmutov.calepin.co/review-antifragile-by-nassim-nich...

geographomics 12y ago
To use an analogy, it sounds roughly like the distinction between adaptive and innate immune systems in vertebrates.
bluecalm 12y ago
It's learning from errors and failures or evolving or self-correcting. The only real function that neologism serve is to ensure that there are several pages to fill with easy writing about examples of things that are robust and things that are fragile. Really, when reading about concept of learning from mistakes (or in case of software self-correcting) not many would find examples of fragile things interesting. Just because you are defining neologism which have perfectly good equivalents already doesn't make it any more compelling. You just fill paragraphs with boring fluff and make reader wonder why the hell you are not jumping to the point already. This is unfortunately also visible in the paper from OP as, following Taleb, about half of it is concerned with giving murky definition of completely redundant term and then telling the reader what it is and what is it not with numerous examples. The author would do well to remove all the references to anti-fragile and Taleb and substitute those with some history of self-correcting software. Maybe try to research who first wrote about it or tried to construct working code. You know, like some information and background about the concept instead of redefining it and then doing a session of mental masturbation over it.
- graeme 12y ago
  Self-correcting isn't quite the right term, though it's closer than robust. Something antifragile won't necessarily self-correct if left alone. Instead, antifragile refers to something that improves when subject to disorder and shocks. It's a new word for a concept we can understand, but have no word for. Lacking a word for something severely impairs our ability to talk about it. To validly criticize the word, one should first show that they understand what's meant by it, and propose an existing term that captures that. None of the critiques in this thread have done that.
doctorstupid 12y ago
Regardless, 'anti-fragile' sounds horrible. I think that resilient is a better word for the job.
- lukifer 12y ago
  The concept is distinct from resiliency. It is the idea of a system that actually benefits from small amounts of stress or entropy. One example Taleb gives is bone: the micro-fractures created by the normal stresses of standing and walking force the bone to grow stronger; whereas astronauts in prolonged zero-G are at risk for gradual bone loss due to the lack of this stress. That said, it's probably not the best word, but the realities of path dependence make it very difficult to coin new words out of whole cloth. An equally arbitrary neologism like "hyper-resiliency" would have probably made just as much sense.
  - mpyne 12y ago
    Might I suggest "hormetic", which comes from similar hypotheses of biological processes? E.g. the idea that low levels of radiation might even be beneficial overall by forcing your body to continuously use strong healing mechanisms is known as radiation hormesis.
    - lukifer 12y ago
      It may not be as "sticky" to laypeople, but that's a super-cool word, thanks for sharing!
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

coldtea 12y ago

Especially those created by hacks like Taleb, who rose into prominence by devoting a whole book to "unpredictable" events, full of trivial observations and repetition.

eruditely 12y ago
He is vindicated already, it's time to move on.
Udo 12y ago
It's kind of offtopic, but I can't help feeling a bit relieved that I'm not the only one who read this highly recommended book and got increasingly confused how this heap of triviality and self-congratulation managed to be so successful. Taleb certainly out-gladwelled the other contenders in this category. I am convinced the success of this book can't be due to completely organic factors (at least that's what I hope), but it's here now and however derivative and trite Taleb's contributions to the subject matter might be, he managed to claim ownership for the entire field. The result is it becomes impossible to publicly talk about robustness and fault tolerance without invoking him. If you as an author steer around him, someone from your audience will bring it up and it will be much worse than if you had included the mandatory nod in his direction right from the start. The book has also managed to create a somewhat fertile ground for the subject in lay people and it seems wasteful not to capitalize on that basis when addressing a group of people. So yes, I expect this book will be referenced as the gold standard for the rest of our lifetime.
- api 12y ago
  I too have had this impression. For a long time I've been very curious about how this kind of king-making occurs and what the underlying political machinery looks like. I don't buy that it's random or organic. Being a middle class hick from the American Midwest and having attended a regular-tier non-coastal school, it's a bit outside my domain... though I did live in Boston for a while and work a lot around the MIT/Harvard orbit. That gave me a definite sense that there's a caste system at work but not exactly how it works or how one goes about gaining entry (or is tapped for entry). Being admitted to the Right School seems to usually be a prerequisite, though there are exceptions. I'm not saying Taleb is a fool. He's certainly very interesting, but he's not the only thinker in this field by any stretch of the imagination. People have been talking about this stuff since back in the 60s when it was called cybernetics. Then they called it complexity, dynamical systems, evolvable systems, and so forth. Taleb might have added some things, but he did not found the field any more than Stephen Wolfram founded the study of cellular automata. I'm not comparing Wolfram and Taleb. Actually I think they're opposites. Wolfram has a lot of money and a big ego (probably bigger than Taleb's), and he certainly is very smart, but his work doesn't seem to have received the nod of the establishment while Taleb's obviously has. Wolfram is more like a tycoon trying to buy his way into a circle that... well... <sniff sniff>... those who are truly in the club would never stoop that low. Who makes these decisions? If you look at Taleb's background, he certainly has gone through or at least been affiliated with all the right schools. The top-tier (Ivy League if you're in the USA) academic network is (in my opinion) the most powerful aristocratic network in the modern world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Academic_career http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Academic_... I think what fascinates me the most about the aristocratic networks that run through the top-tier universities and their corporate and governmental orbits is how silent they are. You can make kings with millions in paid PR too, but that's noisy and conveys at least some impression that the PR is indeed being "driven." The real power networks of society seem able to make kings with a wink and a nod and it looks completely organic, often giving the impression that these individuals rose to prominence on pure merit and hard work. Again not saying these individuals don't have merit or that they don't work hard-- I'm sure they do both. But so do millions and millions of other people, and they never get the kind of success the "tapped" or "knighted" see. P. S. You'd probably find Peter Thiel interesting. He's known for being a skeptic of the whole "fooled by randomness" line of thinking. Search for his name on YouTube and select ">20 minutes" length and you can find many interesting talks. I'm looking forward to his book: http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296 http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804... I don't always agree with Thiel, but even when I don't he's one of those people who always makes me think.

agumonkey 12y ago

In my understanding, robust systems know how to deal with failures, while anti-fragile gain energy with failures.

graeme 12y ago
This is correct. We didn't have a word for it before. Robust is not the same thing as antifragile. Those criticism the term should first say either: 1. What existing word means the same as antifragile, or 2. Why they think robust is equivalent to antifragile
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

api 12y ago

Coining a neologism is an act of linguistic imperialism that helps to link your identity and body of work -- as originator of the neologism -- to a field. It's worse in some scientific fields than others. I spent a lot of time studying emergence, oh wait I mean complexity, oh wait I mean dissipative structures, self-organizing systems, class IV cellular automata, dynamical systems, chaordic systems, oh screw it. It's really bad in that field. Things whose parts give rise to second-order behaviors that are not obvious from the structure of the parts themselves. Yeah that.