Antifragile

When exposed to volatility and shocks, Fragile things break, Robust things resist it, Antifragile things benefit from it.

Antifragile systems thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, risk and uncertainty instead of breaking under their pressure.

In his book Antifragile, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

Nassim proposes rules for moving from the fragile toward the antifragile, through reduction of fragility or harnessing antifragility.

Antifragility (and fragility) can almost always be detected using a simple test of asymmetry: anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile.

Lessons to be antifragile:

1. Fragile items break under stress, antifragile items get better from it.
2. In order for a system to be antifragile, most of its parts must be fragile.
3. Antifragile systems work, because they build extra capacity when put under stress.