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> I suppose random king-making could be an example of just the kind of black swan events he talks about. I feel reminded of the George RR Martin quote that "ch

by Udo 12y ago

> I suppose random king-making could be an example of just the kind of black swan events he talks about. I feel reminded of the George RR Martin quote that "chaos is a ladder". I don't think the rise of Antifragile is a truly chaotic event though, it's largely due to whatever the opposite of the Black Swan idea should be called. I guess the words to use would be planning and brute force... > Is it really organic? I'm skeptical of that. I suppose it's possible... Initially, these things are probably orchestrated by influential PR connections. It can't be entirely predetermined, but I guess some careful research was done to map out the pop-intellectual vacuum where this book was going to position itself. What really put me off was the arrogance with which he casually claims to be the first one to understand what would have to be pretty old concepts in chaos theory, risk management, and engineering. However, I think it's also a clue that he knew exactly what area he was going to successfully claim ownership of. My guess is this book was helped along massively from the outside, but how ever that came to be, at some point the critical mass was reached anyway. By now it doesn't really matter anymore except to a few of us (including me) who bemusedly like to analyze how things are expertly steered by powerful forces. The point is, no matter what my personal feelings about the book and its heritage, it's now the reference everybody has to use when addressing a whole slew of things. Which makes it required reading. Which perpetuates its authority.

api 12y ago
Yeah, this sort of "takeover of a field" infuriates a lot of people. I know Wolfram got a ton of flak for implying in A New Kind of Science that he basically invented the study of CAs. He didn't. Like I said: what Taleb is talking about was talked about under the name "cybernetics" in the 60s and "complexity" or "chaos theory" in the 90s. It was a major field of interest for me when I was a student, and the more I think back on it the less I think "antifragile" is anything more than a vapid neologism for ideas that have already been out there. Here's some rough synonyms for antifragile from days gone by: autoadaptive, evolvable, autoconstructive, chaordic, etc. I think autoadaptive is the closest, basically a perfect synonym.
- Udo 12y ago
  Well, the positive aspect in these cases is that worthwhile concepts are disseminated more broadly. It's interesting that you mention Wolfram in this context. I remember the criticism he received for his book, most of which probably justified. I also remember I liked reading it, in contrast to Antifragile which felt in equal parts tedious and frustrating. Of course I was comparatively young at the time and many of the concepts in it were new to me, but now even in hindsight I still like his presentation and his viewpoints. While on a fundamental level Wolfram, Gladwell, and Taleb may all three technically be in the business of claiming ownership to pre-existing ideas, A New Kind of Science still holds a lot of memorable nuggets for me, while after most chapters of Antifragile I honestly couldn't tell whether I had just consumed any actual content or not. I still hold that Wolfram's book contains vastly more intellectual workmanship than Taleb's, but it may well be the case that Antifragile seemed extra trite because I felt a strong sense of deja vu where A New Kind of Science simply contained immeasurably more (fascinating) stuff I wasn't familiar with.
- eruditely 12y ago
  This is the sort of critique in pass that demonstrates that you have not spent 10 minutes researching a topic that you would like to so vehemently critique. Read the italized parts below, which explicitly states it is Not chaos theory. Here is a more complete quote from "Common errors in the interpretation of the black swan" Many readers who have too much baggage (or perhaps not enough) tend, when reading for "work" or for the purpose of establishing their status (say, to write a review), rather than to satisfy a genuine curiosity, to read quickly and efficiently, scanning jargon terms and rapidly making associations with some pre-packaged ideas. (THIS RESULTS IN THE SQUEEZING in the squeezing of the ideas exposed in The Black Swan into some commoditized well know framework, as if I partook of the off-the-shelf-re-warmed-ideas-with- some-new-wrinkle traditions that give a bad name to academia, or as if my positions could be squeezed into: standard skepticism, empiricism, essentialism, pragmatism, Popperian falsificationism, Knightian uncertainty, behavioral economics, CHAOS THEORY, etc. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490769 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490769 So by his own words, it is not. Autoadaptive does not work as well because Antifragility, which was prior to the name-change was called tinkerng. It is more "Convex option like decision making"

by Udo 12y ago

api 12y ago

Yeah, this sort of "takeover of a field" infuriates a lot of people. I know Wolfram got a ton of flak for implying in A New Kind of Science that he basically invented the study of CAs. He didn't. Like I said: what Taleb is talking about was talked about under the name "cybernetics" in the 60s and "complexity" or "chaos theory" in the 90s. It was a major field of interest for me when I was a student, and the more I think back on it the less I think "antifragile" is anything more than a vapid neologism for ideas that have already been out there. Here's some rough synonyms for antifragile from days gone by: autoadaptive, evolvable, autoconstructive, chaordic, etc. I think autoadaptive is the closest, basically a perfect synonym.

Udo 12y ago
Well, the positive aspect in these cases is that worthwhile concepts are disseminated more broadly. It's interesting that you mention Wolfram in this context. I remember the criticism he received for his book, most of which probably justified. I also remember I liked reading it, in contrast to Antifragile which felt in equal parts tedious and frustrating. Of course I was comparatively young at the time and many of the concepts in it were new to me, but now even in hindsight I still like his presentation and his viewpoints. While on a fundamental level Wolfram, Gladwell, and Taleb may all three technically be in the business of claiming ownership to pre-existing ideas, A New Kind of Science still holds a lot of memorable nuggets for me, while after most chapters of Antifragile I honestly couldn't tell whether I had just consumed any actual content or not. I still hold that Wolfram's book contains vastly more intellectual workmanship than Taleb's, but it may well be the case that Antifragile seemed extra trite because I felt a strong sense of deja vu where A New Kind of Science simply contained immeasurably more (fascinating) stuff I wasn't familiar with.
eruditely 12y ago
This is the sort of critique in pass that demonstrates that you have not spent 10 minutes researching a topic that you would like to so vehemently critique. Read the italized parts below, which explicitly states it is Not chaos theory. Here is a more complete quote from "Common errors in the interpretation of the black swan" Many readers who have too much baggage (or perhaps not enough) tend, when reading for "work" or for the purpose of establishing their status (say, to write a review), rather than to satisfy a genuine curiosity, to read quickly and efficiently, scanning jargon terms and rapidly making associations with some pre-packaged ideas. (THIS RESULTS IN THE SQUEEZING in the squeezing of the ideas exposed in The Black Swan into some commoditized well know framework, as if I partook of the off-the-shelf-re-warmed-ideas-with- some-new-wrinkle traditions that give a bad name to academia, or as if my positions could be squeezed into: standard skepticism, empiricism, essentialism, pragmatism, Popperian falsificationism, Knightian uncertainty, behavioral economics, CHAOS THEORY, etc. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490769 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490769 So by his own words, it is not. Autoadaptive does not work as well because Antifragility, which was prior to the name-change was called tinkerng. It is more "Convex option like decision making"