I AM NOT SO INTELLIGENT The epiphany I had in my career in randomness came when I understood that I was not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to even try to fight my emotions. Besides, I believe...
Hormesis was well known by the ancients (and like the color blue was known but not expressed). But it was only in 1888 that it was first scientifically described (though still not given a name) by a G...
His idea is that if we were to optimize at every step in life, then it would cost us an infinite amount of time and energy. Accordingly,
He defaults to thinking that what he doesn't see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.
Given the unattainability of perfect robustness, we need a mechanism by which the system regenerates itself continuously by using, rather than suffering from, random events, unpredictable shocks, stre...
Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and
Frano Barović reading this chapter wrote to me: Machines: use it and lose it; organisms: use it or lose it. Also note that everything alive needs stressors, but not all machines need to be left alone—...
For the antifragile, shocks bring more benefits (equivalently, less harm) as their intensity increases (up to a point).
FAT TONY: My dear Socrates … you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally righ...
Ex cura theoria nascitur.
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.
Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas S...
Contrary to conventional wisdom, our body of knowledge does not increase from a series of confirmatory observations, like
Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race looking out f...
Clearly, an open mind is a necessity when dealing with randomness. Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed owing to the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion...
Capitalism is, among other things, the revitalization of the world thanks to the opportunity to be lucky. Luck is the grand equalizer, because almost everyone can benefit from it. The socialist govern...
By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!
Breaking a fast feels like the exact opposite of a hangover.*
Books to me are not expanded journal articles, but reading experiences, and the academics who tend to read in order to cite in their writing--rather than read for enjoyment, curiosity, or simply becau...