HN Books @HNBooksMonth

The best books of Hacker News.

Hacker News Comments on
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 14 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
View on Amazon [↗]
HN Books may receive an affiliate commission when you make purchases on sites after clicking through links on this page.
Amazon Summary
Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile “Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.” — The Economist “A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.” — Newsweek
HN Books Rankings

Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
> The big investment in your career will be ideas that stand the test of time.

This is spot on in my experience.

As I grow in my career as a software engineer, it's funny how much more often I notice that the things that set one apart in the field is a level-headed understanding of the fundamentals and a calm resolve to take into consideration what's worked in the past, much more than one's ability to "chase the shiny".

Honorable mention of the Lindy Effect [1] here - one of my favorite ideas from Antifragile [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect [2] https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...

rootsudo
So true. For me it has become RegEx, Email, Email Servers/security, Excel, and sorting. Never thought I'd go on about it, but man. It apparently is my niche.
xchaotic
Thanks. It's the same for me, actually - I built a lot of my career around XML and other W3C standards and the great thing about those, while complicated is that you can refer to a well defined spec to see what the behaviour SHOULD be. But I'm hoping it's not either/or question - I can continue learning software architecture patterns and anti-pattern but perhaps there is some new, realtively untapped market or end-user experience where this can be leveraged.
bawolff
I think a big part also - new ideas often dont have info on how they fail- its all hype. However old ideas do, so if you can link them, its easier to use the new technology appropriately.
A book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a scholar, trader, and philosopher. He wrote a book called Antifragile, link is below. He coined the term 'Black Swan' as well. Antifragile things harness chaos and get stronger, the world is not getting less chaotic.

Taleb - ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb Antifragile - https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...

100% Agree. And this is my 2 cents of WHY:

Basically all current investments are high-risk in the age we live in, because we are "at the brink of the chasm" on all fronts:

- general technology: ...the barriers to market are so low that a startup can spring to being at any moment and eat all your profits away

- (social) media / communication: anything can change anytime, today's Facebook can be tomorrow's Hi5

- biotech: we're getting closer to the "you can do it your garage stage" which will change everything

- world politics: India and China are big players now and their moves can no longer be predicted, also US internal politics is a cauldron of volatility, and in a decade or two we'll have the "New Africa" rising... good luck predicting anything

- ML/AI: we might be at the brink of f Singularity with superhuman-AI around the corner... but we have no idea whether it will be in 5 years or 100 years (!) ...this alone is enough to fuck up all worldwide future prediction on anything... when you're staring up from somewhere around the foot of an exponential curve everything looks like "wtf, nothing makes sense"

And also, the last economic "crisis" increased everyone's aversion to risk, kind of the opposite of what you'd need now to increase level of investment...

What needs to change is the attitude of people with money towards risk! I'd love to see people like Elon Musk succeed long-term, not because I like them or what they are doing, but because they are the only ones with an attitude that can create growth right now.

We should really re-learn thinking and working with volatility, maybe starting from what Nassim Taleb says in his Antifragile (https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...) and his talks like How to Live in a World we Don't Understand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEnmjMgP_Jo - warning: he's a terrible speaker... and not a great writer either, so getting to the root of his ideas will take time). Maybe not. But current "risk reduction" attitude cannot work (hint why: even if you reduce Infinity by 20% you still have f Infinity!).

Flow https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-...

Antifragile https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...

High Output Management https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/d...

The Master Switch https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...

Thinking Fast and Slow https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp...

jamestimmins
Upvote for The Master Switch. It's one of the few books that manages to brilliantly cover a large territory within a small number of pages (<300).
I think this definitely an interesting idea, I have at least 1 new idea a month but usually just talk to close friends about them and move on with life.

I agree that expecting to create 12 great projects next year is a stretch and odds are that 12/12 will become vaporware, however, the lessons learned and the potential (albeit small) for any one of them to actually become something makes this a worthwhile endeavor to me.

Actually reminds me of something I read from Antifragile[1]:

> Rule 4: Trial and error beats academic knowledge.

> Things that are antifragile love randomness and uncertainty, which also means—crucially—that they can learn from errors. Tinkering by trial and error has traditionally played a larger role than directed science in Western invention and innovation... [2]

Say what you will about NNT's writing style, but the guy makes a lot of sense to me.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...

[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873247351045781209...

Yes, both are fair points. "Oxymoron" was a lazy jab I just came up with on the fly.

You're right that only signed ints admit undefined behavior. Unfortunately you can't get by using just unsigned ints. So for me the choice was between mixing signed/unsigned and just using signed everywhere. If use of signed ints is unavoidable and also leads to undefined behavior, I'd like to exercise it more often in hopes of learning faster what things I shouldn't be doing. This seems like the more antifragile choice (http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...).

That's a very broad question, so I read your comments to get a feel from where you might be coming from and/or going to and where you and I might overlap:

* Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragile, things that gain from disorder http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...

* Jared Diamond. The World until yesterday, what can we learn from traditional societies http://www.amazon.com/World-Until-Yesterday-Traditional-Soci...

* Frans de Waal. The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates http://www.amazon.com/Bonobo-Atheist-Search-Humanism-Primate...

* John Higgs. The KLF: Chaos, Magic... http://www.amazon.com/KLF-Chaos-Magic-Music-Money-ebook/dp/B...

* Joseph Jaworski. Synchronicity, the inner Path of leadership http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-The-Inner-Path-Leadershi...

* Piero Ferrucci. Your Inner Will, finding personal strength in critical times http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Will-Personal-Strength/dp/0...

* William Irvine. A Guide to the good life, the ancient art of stoic joy http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/01953...

* Chogyam Trungpa. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior http://www.amazon.com/Shambhala-Sacred-Warrior-Chogyam-Trung...

* Tomas Malik. Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us http://www.amazon.com/Patience-God-Story-Zacchaeus-Continuin...

* Nick Winter. The Motivation Hacker http://www.amazon.com/Motivation-Hacker-Nick-Winter/dp/09892...

* Chas Emerick, Brian Carper, Christophe Grad. Clojure Programming http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick/dp/14...

Fiction:

* Peter Hamilton - The Reality Dysfunction

* Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon (his other hit: Snow Crash is surprisingly more history then SF now...)

It's always interesting to look at old predictions– there was that Newsweek article that predicted the Internet was never going to be a big deal [1] (amusing because now Newsweek is online-only), and there were all the negative comments on the launch of the iPhone. [2] Also I believe Drew Houston's "Show HN: Dropbox" thread has a famous "Why would anybody need this, I can do the same with <complicated procedure>" [3].

It's tempting to think, "Ah, people! So terrible at predicting things." I think it's interesting to think about why that is.

The main problem, I think, isn't that people make wrong predictions altogether. It's that it's very hard to see how things will change and evolve over time, and how the ecosystem will change with it. The "One Laptop Per Child" idea [4] sounds a little dated and silly now.

I suppose if we just remember that progress is continuous rather than discrete, and that a lot of seeming limitations can be overcome with currently-unlikely innovations, then a lot of predictions will be forced to be a lot more precise.

Perhaps the Newsweek prediction might've been amended to, "In its present form, the Internet is unlikely to change the world."

The problem with predictions is– things rarely stay in their present forms, and the world around them rarely stays the same, either.

I think pg addresses this in his most recent essay, "What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?" [5] In his words– "they practically all seemed lame at first."

So we have to learn to live in a world where our initially valid assessments of a thing might become rapidly invalid because of change. And this is where Nassim Taleb's work about the problem of prediction [6] comes into play. Rather than trying to predict a particular outcome, it makes much more sense to focus on evaluating robustness and antifragility– "How will this thing respond to change? What are the potential upsides, what are the potential downsides? What will kill it? What will give it more utility?"

Even if the odds are really low that something might come around, if the payoff is high enough, it might be worth betting on. I think that's the whole point of things like YC.

___

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20070116071424/http://www.engadg...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

[5] http://paulgraham.com/altair.html

[6] http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...

Antifragile - To help keep civilization from needing to rebuild itself a 3rd time. http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...
iwwr
What were the first two times?
bergie
I guess bronze age collapse, and the fall of Rome
ajcarpy2005
He's saying it hypothetically:present time of 1 time, after proposed catastrophe and civilization collapse, this is second time. Antifragile is intended to prevent breakdown of the second build up. So that a third rebuild is not necessary.
You might enjoy the book http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...
SocksCanClose
have been meaning to tackle that, actually -- thanks for the nudge. i read The Bed of Procrustes a few years ago...
OMsignal Full Stack Software Engineer [REMOTE or LOCAL]

Headquarters: Montreal | http://www.omsignal.com

Link to Job Offer: https://github.com/OMsignal/omsignal-job-offers/blob/master/...

OMsignal is made possible by the expertise of Smart Textile experts, Data/Bio Scientists, Hardware, Firmware and Software Engineers. Please note that this offer is mostly focused on Full Stack Engineers, but we are also looking to hire smart Data Scientists who have an interest in biodata and possibly people who could help bridging BLE/MSP firmware and driver development.

    What we do
    ==========
OMsignal is an exciting Montreal start-up developing a revolutionary line of bio-sensing clothes that connect seamlessly to smartphones. The company is at the intersection of the wearable technology, well-being and fashion markets.

We are a well-funded startup [1] working to deliver a smart biometric shirt. You can read more about our mission on [2]. And for those who followed the US Open 2014, we are the technology behind Ralph Laurent Polo Tech.

We just shipped the product to our first customers.

    What we are looking for
    =======================
We are looking for Full Stack Software Engineers who can help us to architect, design and implement a complex system based on bleeding edge technologies (Scala, Akka, Spray, Reactive Programming [3], iOS, Swift, Docker...), a modern architectural style (Micro Services, CQRS, Event Sourcing, Eventual Consistency), and a clean codebase (Clean Code, Domain Driven Design…) -- emphasis on the “Engineer” over the “Full Stack” part.

In-depth knowledge of the technologies we use is not required, but having strong Software Engineering foundations is (Algorithmics, Design and Architectural Patterns, …). Understanding that code is read much more often than it is written is an absolute must.

You should be willing to face the upcoming challenges (Machine Learning, Predictive algorithms, Opening the platform/iOS SDK/API, -- who knows the rest?…).

And of course, you need to speak/write english fluently (we need to understand each other, right ?)

     The Technologies we currently use
     =================================

 - Backend : Scala, Akka, Akka Persistence, Spray, ReactiveMongo, SBT, Kafka, ZooKeeper
 - Web : NodeJS, AngularJS
 - iOS : Swift, Objective C, ReactiveCocoa, Core Bluetooth, CocoaPods`
 - DevOps : Ubuntu, Docker, Ruby, Amazon AWS/EC2
 - Project management: git/github
 
The `iOS` stack is more sophisticated than the average iOS App. It includes a Pub/Sub system similar to `Apache Kafka` (that we call iOS Kafka internally), makes heavy use of asynchronous programming + `CQRS`/`Event Sourcing` and computes biometric algorithms and reports.

    Our culture
    ===========
We get some inspiration from the Open Source model to achieve high-cohesion (within teams) and low-coupling (between teams) : small, empowered teams, systematic pull requests, developer autonomy.

Our software engineering practices are also influenced by Antifragile [4] principles (Small is Beautiful, Less is more, Hormesis principle, evolutionary darwinism, over-compensation ...)

And if you are on the Paleo diet, like hiking/camping or enjoy a good raclette you will certainly find friends here!

    Next step
    =========
If you are curious about the project and want to explore opportunities working with us, you can - reach out to [email protected] - come hang out on IRC (irc.freenode.net #omsignal) to ask your questions

If you have a `github`/`bitbucket` account, we would love to take a look at what you like doing (even if you feel ashamed of it in retrospective -- explain us what you would improve now)

    Footnotes
    =========
[1] http://www.omsignal.com/blogs/omsignal-blog/14669049-omsigna... [2] http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/16/brave-new-wearable-world-c... [3] http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/ [4] http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...
OMsignal Full Stack Software Engineer [REMOTE or LOCAL]

Headquarters: Montreal | http://www.omsignal.com

Link to Job Offer: https://github.com/OMsignal/omsignal-job-offers/blob/master/...

OMsignal is made possible by the expertise of Smart Textile experts, Data/Bio Scientists, Hardware, Firmware and Software Engineers. Please note that this offer is mostly focused on Full Stack Engineers, but we are also looking to hire smart Data Scientists who have an interest in biodata and possibly people who could help bridging BLE/MSP firmware and driver development.

    What we do
    ==========
OMsignal is an exciting Montreal start-up developing a revolutionary line of bio-sensing clothes that connect seamlessly to smartphones. The company is at the intersection of the wearable technology, well-being and fashion markets.

We are a well-funded startup [1] working to deliver a smart biometric shirt. You can read more about our mission on [2]. And for those who followed the US Open 2014, we are the technology behind Ralph Laurent Polo Tech.

We just shipped the product to our first customers.

    What we are looking for
    =======================
We are looking for Full Stack Software Engineers who can help us to architect, design and implement a complex system based on bleeding edge technologies (Scala, Akka, Spray, Reactive Programming [3], iOS, Swift, Docker...), a modern architectural style (Micro Services, CQRS, Event Sourcing, Eventual Consistency), and a clean codebase (Clean Code, Domain Driven Design…) -- emphasis on the “Engineer” over the “Full Stack” part.

In-depth knowledge of the technologies we use is not required, but having strong Software Engineering foundations is (Algorithmics, Design and Architectural Patterns, …). Understanding that code is read much more often than it is written is an absolute must.

You should be willing to face the upcoming challenges (Machine Learning, Predictive algorithms, Opening the platform/iOS SDK/API, -- who knows the rest?…).

And of course, you need to speak/write english fluently (we need to understand each other, right ?)

     The Technologies we currently use
     =================================

 - Backend : Scala, Akka, Akka Persistence, Spray, ReactiveMongo, SBT, Kafka, ZooKeeper
 - Web : NodeJS, AngularJS
 - iOS : Swift, Objective C, ReactiveCocoa, Core Bluetooth, CocoaPods`
 - DevOps : Ubuntu, Docker, Ruby, Amazon AWS/EC2
 - Project management: git/github
 
The `iOS` stack is more sophisticated than the average iOS App. It includes a Pub/Sub system similar to `Apache Kafka` (that we call iOS Kafka internally), makes heavy use of asynchronous programming + `CQRS`/`Event Sourcing` and computes biometric algorithms and reports.

    Our culture
    ===========
We get some inspiration from the Open Source model to achieve high-cohesion (within teams) and low-coupling (between teams) : small, empowered teams, systematic pull requests, developer autonomy.

Our software engineering practices are also influenced by Antifragile [4] principles (Small is Beautiful, Less is more, Hormesis principle, evolutionary darwinism, over-compensation ...)

And if you are on the Paleo diet, like hiking/camping or enjoy a good raclette you will certainly find friends here!

    Next step
    =========
If you are curious about the project and want to explore opportunities working with us, you can - reach out to [email protected] - come hang out on IRC (irc.freenode.net #omsignal) to ask your questions

If you have a `github`/`bitbucket` account, we would love to take a look at what you like doing (even if you feel ashamed of it in retrospective -- explain us what you would improve now)

    Footnotes
    =========
[1] http://www.omsignal.com/blogs/omsignal-blog/14669049-omsigna... [2] http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/16/brave-new-wearable-world-c... [3] http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/ [4] http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...
This is a great example of what Nassim Taleb would call "lack of skin in the game"[1].

It's a wonder that we don't see more of these crimes, given that the rewards (if they don't get caught) accrue to the parties responsible, while the punishments (if caught) are suffered almost exclusively by everybody else. The people who made the criminal decisions do not suffer when the corporation is fined/santioned, it's shareholders, innocent employees and society at large who do. In other words, there's very little disincentive against this behavior.

What we really should consider is adding personal criminal liability to corporate officers who are found to either commit or condone financial crimes, as far up in the call stack as it can be proven.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...

josho
Fraud is fraud. I understand that it is possible for officers of corporations to face jail if found guilty of fraud.

My understanding is the lack of will (or resources) for entities like the DOJ/SEC to investigate and punish those responsible.

HN Books is an independent project and is not operated by Y Combinator or Amazon.com.
~ yaj@
;laksdfhjdhksalkfj more things
yahnd.com ~ Privacy Policy ~
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.