But what’s the book about? It’s part philosophy, part theories of political economy with a smattering of Taleb’s rules for living “antifragile” in a fragile world.
Antifragile divides the world into three categories: antifragile, robust and fragile. Taleb says, “If I asked you what the opposite of fragile is, you would say, robust. That is wrong.” The author suggests antifragile means something that grows stronger under pressure. Antifragility welcomes stresses and adapts and thrives during black swans. On the other hand, something that is fragile avoids disorder and is susceptible to destruction during unpredictable shocks. If something is robust, it can absorb shocks but it remains unchanged. According to Antifragile, bureaucrats are fragile while entrepreneurs are antifragile; politicians are fragile, a truck driver is robust and an artist is antifragile; debt is fragile, equity is robust and venture capital is antifragile.
As for where Canada rates on his antifragile scale, Taleb says Canada is not antifragile but robust. “Canada is more robust than the United States because you have natural resources and less debt and you are more decentralized because of the Quebec problem.”
Can’t resist a few more snippets from this excellent review (one of the few I’ve read where I learned anything new. Kudos to Macleans and Jana Juginovic).
“Canada survived because you had lower levels of debt in the system. What happened is you have commodities, and when there is hyperinflation, you guys go through the moon. I own Canadian dollars as a hedge against inflation. Canada is like Russia without the Russians.”
And is this really what’s behind Taleb’s ‘The Pinker Problem’?
But he also displays an incredible sense of loyalty. After the 2002 New Yorker profile, of which Taleb complained that Gladwell “made me seem gloomy and I’m not gloomy,” the two writers became friends. In 2009, Gladwell told a C-SPAN interviewer that he feels an intellectual kinship with Taleb.
So, when the renowned Canadian-born Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker penned a critical review in The New York Times of fellow Canadian Malcolm Gladwell’s novel, What the Dog Saw, Taleb rushed to Gladwell’s defense. “I got furious. I feel loyalty for someone who does something nice for you, when you are nobody.” Taleb wrote a scathing critique of Pinker’s research in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. In his critique, titled “The Pinker problem,” Taleb claims Pinker’s book is riddled with errors in sampling and doesn’t “recognize the difference between rigorous empiricism and anecdotal statements.” Pinker responded with his own paper in which he writes, “Taleb shows no signs of having read Better Angels.”