4 ms·

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
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