Antifragile in 60 drawings -Part 1
Go through Nassim Taleb's revolutionary book in just a few minutes with handdrawn visual summary !
I know, I’m late to the party… The book “Antifragile” came out exactly 11 years ago (Nov 27th 2012)!
Better late than never I guess…
If you allow me, a bit of context on what you are about to see:
Two years ago, I was missing a bit of creativity in my life and decided to start drawing again. To make it simple and easy, I challenged myself to draw something everyday… for a year! …And I did!
At first I drew random things and posted the daily drawing on instagram (hello!), but after a while, running out of ideas, I decided to draw the books I was reading. I drew “Leadership is Language” (it will be one of my next post - use the Subscribe button below so you don’t miss it!), then went on to “Antifragile”, and that book blew my mind! Such a fun read, and so insightful too.
As 60 drawings is a lot to cover in one post, I decided to split the book in two, so stay tune for the second part.
I wish you a great Visual Reading, and look forward to your feedback and impressions in the comments!
The concept of “Antifragility:
The opposite of being Fragile is not resisting to shocks, but to actually look for them!
Being AntiFragile means to benefit from disorder!
What is fragile hates uncertainty in all its forms, the worse being Time… Everything fragile breaks with time.
Sometimes bad isn’t that bad:
There are benefits to small doses of “harm”, that’s often where growth happens, examples:
Using small dose of poison can develop immunity
Hormesis stress leading to enhanced health
Post-traumatic growth
Lacking something can be good when it leads to overcompensate.
Redundancy, can feel wasteful but having Reserves is an insurance against volatility. We have two eyes, two hears etc. for a reason.
Hate, Rejection are powerful drivers.
For a corporate executive, protecting its reputation is a must, which make him/her fragile in that domain
A construction worker would be robust, = more free in regards of information / reputation
An Artist or writer could be Antifragile, as a sulfurous reputation would only increase their visibility, giving them the ability to play with / benefit from reputational attacks
Cat or a Washing Machine?
Living organisms / Complex systems need stressor & variability to be healthy
Randomness, fear, thrist, adventures, hunger, moods swings, variability creates Culture, the opposite being the golden jail of the scheduled Life, living life as a tourist
What Kills me make Others stronger
Strong Antifragility is always about systems with weak units. The cells in your body need to get replaced for it to stay healthy,
In Bad systems, One unit failing may causes the all system to collapse.
In Good systems, a unit failure uncovers new information that the system uses to get stronger.
- Seeing how a person react to somebody else mistake or harm directed to them reveals their character
- Having made a lot of errors (but never the same twice) make you more reliable, than somebody with a perfect track record, who never made any mistake.
(Ps: Nelson Mandela quote is not from the book, but I thought it illustrated well the point)
Heroes are those who take risk for others. The author put entrepreneurs in that category (producing economic growth, lifting people out of poverty…) and imagines a world where society values their contribution through social protection and recognition.
The Souk & the Office Building
- John the banker experience an illusion of stability (man-made reduction of randomness) which can abruptly stop with an unexpected event.
- George the artisan constantly struggles the natural variability, learning and adapting its approach, he can also benefit from (or choose to decline) unexpected positive opportunity (ex generous client with an unsual request).
Smaller units encourage more individual accountability, the small fight aggregating into a boring stable system
Large entities produces bureaucracy and the effects of bad decisions are multiplied
The great Turkey problem,
Imagine a turkey making predictions about the future based on the current and past situation, everything looks perfect… until Thanksgiving!
Nassim Taleb warns about the dangers of man-made stability of large centralized entities,
The removal of the natural volatility (or variability) making the system smooth in the short term but fragile to “black swan” in the long run (game changing event that were not anticipated)
The dangers of a tight control / artificial stability,
James Maxwell’s equation show that a tight control of the speed of steam engines may lead to instability.
One aspect of long periods of stability is that small variation can cause panic, while the same variation would have been considered normal in a more variable environment.
Stability can hide vulnerability (for example in firms) and therefore make them weaker as time passes until it is suddenly revealed when the unexpected occurs.
Tell them I love some randomness
After going through how trying to avoid randomness may hurt us, the book describe how adding or using randomness can bring benefits.
Examples:
A donkey put at equal distance between food and water and needing both would die, if not for someone outside nudging him in either direction
Annealing, this process add heat to a metal to get the atoms moving randomly and then controlling the cooling to produce a better configuration
Ancient Athenians used a random pick for their assembly, and even modern political system could benefit from adding some randomness in the picking (see Alessandro Puchino's work)
If you don't know what to take on a large restaurant menu, let fate decide for you :)
The Modern Life is the opposite of Antifragile, focusing on smooth, stable structures, and a good story.
Antifragility don't need words or intellectualization, it is more about action, self organization, survival outside of the cage.
Naive Intervention
Iatrogenics or the healer's unintended harm
In this chapter, Taleb takes the concept of iatrogenics to generalize it to any domain where human intervention (with good intentions) may actually cause damage.
Ex: How technology can contribute to the feeling of alienation that lots of people experience.
More often than not, we over-intervene. Sometimes doing nothing is the best thing we can do!
Following the advice above, let me stop this long post here 🙂.
Thank you for reading! I will add the second part soon.
If you found this valuable, share it with friends! The more the merrier!
You can find Part 2 here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/ludtoussaint/p/antifragile-in-60-drawings-part-2
Part 2 is available here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/ludtoussaint/p/antifragile-in-60-drawings-part-2