More Skin in the Game in 2013 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Project Syndicate

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I tell people what I have in my portfolio, not what I predict; that way, I will be the first to be harmed. It is not ethical to drag people into these exposures without incurring the risk of losses. In my book Antifragile, I tell people what I do, not what they should do, to the great irritation of the literary critics. I do so not for autobiographical reasons, but only because the other approach would not be ethical.

CommentsFinally, there are warmongers. To deal with them, the onetime consumer advocate and former US presidential candidate Ralph Nader has proposed that those who vote in favor of war should place themselves or a descendent into military service.

CommentsOne can only hope that something will be done in 2013 to implement some skin in the game heuristics. A safe and just society demands nothing less.

via More Skin in the Game in 2013 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Project Syndicate.

In the past journalism was an act of courage…

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In the past journalism was an act of courage, revealing truths in the face of powerful establishments and risking jail or even death. Today except in such repressive regimes as as Syria or Russia and except for war correspondents it is becoming the refuge of disconnected cowards.
In my entire career I have never seen a financial journalist go to “the other side”, that is pull the trigger or engage in risk taking or in any situation in which one can be exposed to harm from one’s opinion. This can be generalized to journalists in general, who rarely, if ever, switch to doing, all the while pontificating on “Steve Job’s mistakes” or similar purported errors of others, or praising Geithner and other powerful frauds. Jazi Zilber wondered why journalists seemingly so knowledgeable about politics never become politicians. It is the same problem: modern journalists are designed to be either cowards, or have a need to escape reality.
Yet the tragedy is that doers are in contact with the world through journalists.
(SKIN IN THE GAME (BOOK VII), comment)

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Why Antifragile Companies Will Become the New 1% | Brady Capital Research

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As Taleb remarks, unlike black swan events, which are unpredictable by nature, “you can state with a lot more confidence that an object or a structure is more fragile than another should a certain event happen.” And the event that I describe above is the Social Revolution which I believe will shake up the soil of the corporate root system, ripping and tearing at the thin, narrow, and fragmented stakeholder roots of the “fragile” shell companies while increasing the immunity and accelerating the growth of the deep, thick, wide, and highly intertwined stakeholder root systems of the “antifragile” heart and soul companies.

via Why Antifragile Companies Will Become the New 1% | Brady Capital Research.

The Antifragile Enterprise: Complexity Exists, but Let’s Not Overcomplicate it or IT. – Zen and the Art of Enterprise Architecture – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

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So how can we think approach the topic of building an “antifragile” enterprise? First we have to accept Mr. Taleb’s assertion that this notion goes beyond building as system for resiliency. The system has to be built to accept micro amounts of stress or entropy in order to thrive. This is akin to how systems in nature thrive. Therefore stress should be treated as a positive event, not one that an architect should shy away from. But there is a second aspect of this stress. There has to be amount of observation and feedback into the system/solution in order to “comprehend” the stress. The capture of these events allows for the modern enterprise to incorporate the experience into the collective knowledge or the “muscle memory” or the organization. The learning organization comes directly from the practice of systems thinking. Therefore, I am making my own assertion that building an “antifragile” enterprise is one that knows how to exploit information effectively through the application of modern technology.

via The Antifragile Enterprise: Complexity Exists, but Let’s Not Overcomplicate it or IT. – Zen and the Art of Enterprise Architecture – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.