Antifragile aims not merely to shockproof us, and our economies, against the unforeseeable upheavals of the age. Those techniques merely belong to the pursuit of “robustness” or “resilience”, second-order virtues that in Taleb’s comically macho idiom he finds “sissy”. Rather, the holy grail of “antifragility” will mean that we grow through and profit from the random black-swan blows of a volatile and disorderly world. For Taleb, Mother Nature practises antifragility, as do her greatest interpreters: “Evolution loves disturbances… discovery likes disturbances.”

He rings colourful variations on Nietzsche’s “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” – noting bleakly that it kills off others, and thus progress occurs. From failed entrepreneurs, who merit honour as “dead soldiers”, to the “empiric” trial-and-error medicine that outperforms Big Pharma, fools have heroically rushed in to improve systems and institutions. Antifragility, the capacity to benefit from twists of fate and history, thrives on tinkering, improvisation and bricolage, not on one-size-fits-all high theories that the next storm will flatten like matchwood.

via Antifragile, By Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Reviews – Books – The Independent.