About six months ago, four books by mathematician and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb were re-released as a package deal. The book titles are Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and The Bed of Procrustes. Called the \u201cIncerto 4-Book Bundle,\u201d this collection is available in the Kindle electronic format ($51.99). A boxed set of the physical books will be available in October ($70). <\/p>\n
You don\u2019t need this bundle to get the books, though. They\u2019re widely available individually. <\/p>\n
Taleb\u2019s main turf is the notion of uncertainty, or, if you prefer, risk. He applies his outlook and strategies to many elements of life, ranging from seeking (or avoiding) doctors to avoiding (or seeking) financial speculation. <\/p>\n
Of these four books, the most recent is The Bed of Procrustes. This is a small collection of Taleb\u2019s aphorisms. The other books form sort of a trilogy of works on uncertainty and how it plays a role in our lives. <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re looking for nutritious fare for your summertime reading you can\u2019t go wrong with Taleb, especially with Antifragile, which is, in a word, a masterpiece. I\u2019ve mentioned it a few times in this space. I couldn\u2019t ever do justice to the book by trying to summarize it, so I enjoy taking the occasional random concept and thinking about it. <\/p>\n
Even if we don\u2019t see risk directly, we certainly do see its manifestations. So we often see the superficial layer of effects while remaining oblivious to the deeper network of causes. Quite often these causes aren\u2019t just randomness but are rooted in reactions to randomness; these reactions spawn their own consequences, and those consequences spawn, in turn, yet more consequences.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, randomness itself can, and often does, look non-random. This notion, as you might suspect, inspired the book Fooled by Randomness. <\/p>\n
The smart answer to an uncertain world isn\u2019t to try hiding from risk at all costs, since this would, among other things, sever our appreciation of reality, a situation that, from what I see, is increasingly common in our virtually based world. If we forget about reality, though, reality doesn\u2019t forget about us. It just patiently eyes us while licking its chops. <\/p>\n
One insidious thing about school is that we\u2019re often conditioned to worship the concept of the average and the related concept of the bell curve, a symmetrical curve that has a centralized bias around an average. What Taleb points out is that risks, and, more importantly, their consequences, are often asymmetrical.<\/p>\n
For example, if you drive along Middle Road at midnight on a payday Friday, a random occurrence can take 40 years off your lifespan, but no random occurrence is realistically likely to add 40 years to it. This is a lopsided situation, not a symmetrical situation. And it just goes to remind us how an extreme event, like a car crash, can change our entire lives. \u201cUnlikely\u201d doesn\u2019t mean \u201cnot important.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other hand, if you\u2019re stuck in a dead end career that doesn\u2019t pay well, your only shot at improving your future might be to take some risks, risks that, unlike a drive down Middle Road, have some potential upside. Many successful novels, for instance, were penned by the glow of midnight oil as their authors paid the rent with ho-hum day jobs. Of course, many more unsuccessful novels were penned by writers in the same situations. But as long as they can\u2019t fine you for failure to sell a novel, there\u2019s some upside here and, in terms of cash flow, no disastrous downside. <\/p>\n
A related example I see quite often is two-earner couples, where one has a normal career while the other takes a more entrepreneurial path. Assuming that the normal job is enough to cover their living expenses, they can reach for a jackpot while still keeping their feet on solid ground. <\/p>\n
By contrast, and probably more common, are two-earner couples that need both of their incomes to keep solvent. We\u2019re back to Middle Road where risk is a threat, not a promise. Sometimes this unenviable situation is unavoidable, and sometimes it comes via a taste for living the high life. <\/p>\n
Anyway, Antifragile inspires me to think about such things. That\u2019s part of its charm. A book that inspires thinking is more useful than a book that just talks. <\/p>\n
As for the term, \u201cantifragile,\u201d it refers to systems that gain from volatility and random shocks (up to a point, anyway). We all know what \u201cfragile\u201d means, of course; it\u2019s what you write on a package because the contents might shatter if somebody drops the box. But there are many processes, be they biological or economic, in which, over time, the repeated dropping of the conceptual box actually strengthens the contents. People are often scared of risk and volatility, but trying to avoid them entirely can actually create situations that are ultimately weaker, not stronger, and hence more fragile than they\u2019d otherwise be. <\/p>\n
For my summertime reading I\u2019ll be poking my nose in these books again. And if you take a look at any of them, our uncertain world will have one certain thing: You and I will have plenty of interesting stuff to talk about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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