Fooled by Randomness
Antifragility as a concept that is often misunderstood, and it's a concept that is often misused. But once understood, it can be applied to a lot of things in our lives.
Some ideas that I liked from the book:
Taleb’s critique of post-hoc financial analysis. 2008 crisis “explanations” ignored the role of black swan events, similar to explaining lightning strikes as Zeus’s anger.
Weight vs. wealth distributions. No human will weigh 1,000kg, but tech billionaires can exceed GDPs of nations. Yet we apply Mediocristan statistics to stock markets.
The narrative fallacy in action. Cuban Missile Crisis “resolution skills” vs. probabilistic luck - remove 3mm of missile fuel pipe corrosion and we praise diplomacy.
Survivorship bias in tech: 1,000 failed startups birthed Zoom, but we only study the winner. Like crediting lottery winners’ “strategies”.
92% of day traders quit within 2 years, yet financial media interviews the 8% “geniuses”. Compare to 17th century alchemists documenting only successful experiments.
