15 Powerful Lessons from the book "Antifragile"

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

| Thread

1. The book is about decision-making under uncertainty/volatility.

- EVERYTHING either benefits or is harmed by volatility

- The FRAGILE is harmed (think a glass)

- The ROBUST is unchanged (think The Phoenix)

- The ANTIFRAGILE gets better (think The Hydra)
2.

- There is no way to accurately predict WHICH events will occur

- We CAN measure how fragile we are to events

- We CAN take steps to robustify ourselves

- When shit hits the fan, the fragile breaks

- This applies to the economy, politics, health, etc
3. Naive Interventionism

- Systems are COMPLEX

- Most are beyond our understanding

- When we intervene, we introduce potential harm

- These 2nd and 3rd order effects introduce MORE volatility into the system

- This makes systems even less predictable

- STAY in YOUR lane
4. Via Negativa: Removing is superior to Adding

- Less can be More

- Don't add, subtract

- Eliminate the Artificial

- Eliminate the Unnatural

- Eliminate the Unnecessary

Apply these in all areas of your life. When in doubt, SUBTRACT
5."Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence"

Just because...

- you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there

- something is unintelligible doesn't mean it's unintelligent

- you can't explain something doesn't mean it's not important

-->Have HUMILITY
6. The SILVER RULE is superior to the GOLDEN RULE

- "Don't do to others what you don't want done to you"

- We often don't know how we want to be treated

- We always know how we DON'T want to be treated

- "Right" can be relative, "wrong" is almost always wrong
7 If you have more than one reason to do something, just don’t do it.

It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something.

Obvious decisions require no more than a single reason.
8. We need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living, compared to the structured, fake, and ineffective life of an empty-suit CEO with a preset schedule and an alarm clock.
9. Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.

Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them.

You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.
10. Technology is the result of antifragility, exploited by risk-takers in the form of tinkering and trial and error, with nerd-driven design confined to the backstage.
11. The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
12. It is as if the mission of modernity was to squeeze every drop of variability and randomness out of life— with the ironic result of making the world a lot more unpredictable, as if the goddesses of chance wanted to have the last word.
13. Tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.
14. My characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed & defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information.

These types often consider themselves the “victims” of some large plot.
15. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.
Thanks for reading. If you find this thread valuable follow me ( @ajdduggan ) for more content like this.

And retweet the first tweet to share with others:

https://t.co/1PE9qfXmEN

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1

From today, we will memorize the names of 27 Nakshatras in Vedic Jyotish to never forget in life.

I will write 4 names. Repeat them in SAME sequence twice in morning, noon, evening. Each day, revise new names + recall all previously learnt names.

Pls RT if you are in.

2

Today's Nakshatras are:-

1. Ashwini - अश्विनी

2. Bharani - भरणी

3. Krittika - कृत्तिका

4. Rohini - रोहिणी

Ashwini - अश्विनी is the FIRST Nakshatra.

Repeat these names TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon and evening. Like this tweet if you have revised 8 times as told.

3

Today's Nakshatras are:-

5. Mrigashira - मृगशिरा

6. Ardra - आर्द्रा

7. Punarvasu - पुनर्वसु

8. Pushya - पुष्य

First recall previously learnt Nakshatras twice. Then recite these TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon & evening in SAME order. Like this tweet only after doing so.

4

Today's Nakshatras are:-

9. Ashlesha - अश्लेषा

10. Magha - मघा

11. Purvaphalguni - पूर्वाफाल्गुनी

12. Uttaraphalguni - उत्तराफाल्गुनी

Purva means that comes before (P se Purva, P se pehele), and Uttara comes later.

Read next tweet too.

5

Purva, Uttara prefixes come in other Nakshatras too. Purva= pehele wala. Remember.

First recall previously learnt 8 Nakshatras twice. Then recite those in Tweet #4 TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon & evening in SAME order. Like this tweet if you have read Tweets #4 & 5, both.
Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.
The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.