Quotes and Thoughts

We gave the appellation “antifragile” to such a package; a neologism was necessary as there is no simple, noncompound word in the Oxford English Dictionary that expresses the point of reverse fragility. For the idea of antifragility is not part of our consciousness—but, luckily, it is part of our ancestral behavior, our biological apparatus, and a ubiquitous property of every system that has survived.

To counter success, you need a high offsetting dose of robustness, even high doses of antifragility. You want to be Phoenix, or possibly Hydra. Otherwise the sword of Damocles will get you.

DOMAIN INDEPENDENCE IS DOMAIN DEPENDENT

This idea that systems may need some stress and agitation has been missed by those who grasp it in one area and not in another. So we can now also see the domain dependence of our minds, a “domain” being an area or category of activity. Some people can understand an idea in one domain, say, medicine, and fail to recognize it in another, say, socioeconomic life. Or they get it in the classroom, but not in the more complicated texture of the street. Humans somehow fail to recognize situations outside the contexts in which they usually learn about them.

  • Book 1: The Antifragile: An Introduction
    • Chapter 1. Between Damocles and Hydra
      • HALF OF LIFE HAS NO NAME
      • PLEASE BEHEAD ME
        • On the Necessity of Naming
      • PROTO-ANTIFRAGILITY
      • DOMAIN INDEPENDENCE IS DOMAIN DEPENDENT
    • Chapter 2. Overcompensation and Overreaction Everywhere
  • Book 2: