Thread by @startupdaemon

1) There’s a lot of BS about @nntaleb’s Black Swan, antifragility & skin in da game. Let’s take the gloves off and get into trouble.

2) When the Swan flew out, it was immediately butchered by imbeciles not understanding that you can’t predict the unpredictable.

That is the point – and an IQ filter NNT himself proly did not expect.

3) In any complex domain – life! – the Blackest Swan is always skulking around the corner. You know it’s coming, but you don’t know what where when. You can't tame what you've never even conceived of.

Can you get it?

4) Dealing with uncertainty has always been about preparation, not prediction.

This was hardly a novel idea for the ancients – Taleb’s book simply put it in terms even academics could potentially understand. (Many din’t.)

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5) A Black Swan isn’t:

what you know,
what you can predict,
what you can specifically prepare for
what you have already experienced & endured.

Shall I draw you a picture? Because it too will be wrong.

6) How do you prepare for what you don't know, won't foresee, can’t have a “plan” for?

That’s where antifragility comes in.

How do we get to live long enough to feed many a Swan? Build systems that withstand or benefit from volatility in a world we'll never truly Know.

7) Causation, logic, mathematics – they let us see into what is predictable outside our own experiences, they help us make room for the Black Swans in our lives by taming the white ones crowding the sight.

8) The pernicious cults of rationalism & scientism rob you of the greatest gift of science & the most magnificent power of your mind. They blind you to the wizardry of acting beyond the foreseeable.

Because the siren song of certainty, because people like a good story.

9) Antifragile is one of the most practical books you can ever read, if you "get" it.

If.

10) Understand this and understand it well.

All narratives are inherently fragile.

Randomness is that which is beyond narrative.

11) If the high-flying Black Swan was confusing to the low-IQ set, antifragility opened up uncharted stretches of not even wrong.

Because to get antifragility, you have to get disorder, practice & complexity all in the same breath.

12) In @nntaleb's words: antifragile is what benefits from disorder.

Not getting the dis/order frame is the first major tripwire for the novice & the imbecile. It’s in the title, but not at all as straightforward as you might think you think!

13) If you've been around for a while or understood the Black Swan, you'd have already sensed that any perception of "order" is just a mental construct, a pacifier for the mind, a convenient narrative. It's useful until it isn't.

14) That’s why antifragility is about tinkering, not theorizing. You can’t theorize outside a narrative. You can’t innovate in the confines of the familiar. You can’t get used to volatility amid certainty.

To benefit from stressors, you have to expose yourself to stressors.

15) By definition, order is predictable and disorder is uncertain.

Order is a narrative, disorder is an anti-narrative.

Order is always temporary; only disorder is forever. Just ask the turkey.

16) Fragilistas rely on what they think they know. They bullshit with certainty.

Antifragiles are driven by what they know they don’t know. They tinker at the boundary of the unknown.

17) Since randomness ("disorder") is beyond narrative, the only sane way to engage with it “on the same level” is by getting outside the comfort zone of your own narratives.

You do by doing.

Simple as that.

18) Did you get triggered or interrupted by this tweet? Did it feel arrogant & out of place? Wonder why it's there?

Because AF is an invitation for idiots to blow themselves up. Because complexity.

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19) Antifragility is most deeply confusing to the credentialed idiot and the non-practitioner because they think linearly & can't see dimensionality. They are hooked on known paths & certain causes.

20) Only doers see the branching tree of optionality and the many paths up through the haze of superposition. They cherish the pain of every misstep and every fall because they know - the loving embrace of the twigs & the thorns foils the lethal drop.

21) Why is antifragility so difficult to grasp in practice without blowing up? What does such a simple concept have to do with complexity?

Because complexity is... complex. And that’s how it hides in plain sight. (Ask the turkey if you still have it on the line.)

22) The non-practitioner & the credentialed idiot don’t see that antifragility is ALWAYS local to some "range of experience".

They lack this intuition because they’ve never been outside the comforts of the sandbox. And they’ve never been punched in the face by the real world.

23) Example from weightlifting: HIT stress improves bone & muscle density (antifragile with repeated action) while trying to lift a couple of cars turns you into a pulp (fragile instantaneously). But you can end up dead from an undiagnosed heart condition even with good HIT.

24) You can think of the world as two meta-dimensions: intensity (within-domain variation) and extensity (across-domain interaction).

Antifragility is always local because even when intensity is not fat-tailed, extensity can import a blow up from another domain.

25) You get more antifragile to market downturns if you take out a low-interest mortgage on a well-priced home, but keep enough money to pay it for years on. That cash is not just protection, but an option.

Yet you're fragilized to natural disasters that can wreck your property.

26) If antifragility on a personal level is so elusive, how to build it without blowing up? Here are some tested methods (but no guarantees!):

i) Apprenticeship
ii) Tinkering with hedging
iii) Blood in the game

27) The safest way to build antifragility is to apprentice with a Master who's been tinkering repeatedly & deliberately, who's survived & been disciplined by failure. But that person must be a good mentor, else your blowup risk goes up.

28) Getting apprentices to create optionality & take risks without blowing up is the pinnacle of Mastery & good mentorship. This is the Master risk-taker you want, not someone who hangs you out to dry.

A good mentor is your bespoke whip and sandbox all at once.

29) Tinkering at the edge of a field you want to master is how you get the genuine exposure to uncertainty - of outcomes, of your ability, of "what the community thinks".

You don't just get used to it.

You look forward to it. You draw energy from it. You fucking HUNGER.

30) Learning how to tinker takes time, which is fragilizing. So hedge against catastrophic loss – one that closes off too many options.

Save a lot of money before you change jobs, start a business or write that book. Never compromise your health. Reconnect with people of value.

31) Effective tinkering leaves no room for wasted time because always learning valuable skills. The skilled tinkerer can turn every failure into opportunity. Effective hedging gives the tinkerer the resources to act on it and benefit from the "disorder".

32) Learning how to tinker without blowing up comes with a bonus. You build a skill stack, which adds antifragility. Because you can't learn tinkering unless you do it across multiple domains.

Otherwise you just became a specialized fragilista.

startupdaemon.net/crede/

33) My first & last resort in building personal antifragility has been to put Blood in the Game. That you won't find in the INCERTO. Don't confuse it with the Maestro's skin in the game.

34) A lot of people don’t get this, so let’s make it explicit.

Skin in the Game is about "keeping you honest" - to yourself, others and the quality of your own decisions. Personal blowup is not what SITG prevents, it’s a filter that makes SITG work!

35) SITG combats delusion & recklessness because madmen & idiots get filtered out of the pool when they blow up. SITG immunizes the community, not the individual, against blowup.

The community gains in antifragility because “errors” are localized & savagely filtered out.

36) The man said it himself:

“Skin in the game is about honor, courage and sacrifice. If you don’t take risks in what you do, you’re nothing.” - @nntaleb

What do you think the sacrifice is about? French desserts?

37) Skin in the game is exposure to the environment (ecology), which is the ultimate arbiter of survival. It can take many forms of potential loss – reputation, property, life – which is also a deterrent filter (don’t risk what you can’t bear losing).

38) With skin in the game, you pay up if you’re wrong. With blood in the game, you take the cost upfront, win or lose - you pay up even if you decide to do nothing ecologically.

Why this madness?

39) Blood in the Game affords exposure to pain, disorder & uncertainty when you can’t take the risks of tinkering and don’t have the unicorn of a mentor that can protect you from them.

It's a sandbox of your own making, but one you fill with stressors, not comforts. #BIG

40) BIG & SITG are sides of the same lucky coin. The ying-yang of optionally & risk management – personal & social.

BIG is about individuality, SITG is about community. BIG helps you build antifragility & stave off personal ruin, SITG staves off societal collapse & degeneracy.

41) You put blood in the game to grow antifragile, less susceptible to blowup and less exposed to being played for a sucker.

Nassim Taleb on antifragility: “You need variation, but not too much, not too little.”

Savage uncertainty requires savage preparation. #BIG

42) BIG is anti-hypocrisy. How can you have standards for others without applying them even harder on yourself?

You put buckets of blood in the game. Before demanding from others, you demand worlds more from yourself.

Suddenly everything bends to your will. You'll be surprised.

43) BIG is the costliest form of SITG signaling when public. You eat up the pain without prospect of reward or recognition.

Self-savagery sends backstabbing cowards & dangerous idiots scurrying off. Luddix think 19 times before taking you for a sucker.

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44) BIG unlocks & builds your authentic energy & drive with less blowup danger from ecological factors.

You take the pain upfront, so you can handle it and stop if your instincts tell you to. You build resilience, determination, self-direction.

Challenging but precautionary.

45) BIG is SITG without exposing others, precaution practice by yourself.

Intuition for what not to tinker with is essential to antifragility without blowup. BIG makes this instinctual by imposing harsh costs even on mundane tasks. Any blowup is in a sandbox of your own making.

46) BIG tests your skill & conviction before investing months and years of your life.

Can you take the pain? Persist amid uncertainty? Bear the cost of failure? Do whatever it takes?

BIG manifests who you really are & what you really want before the ecological plunge of SITG.