This is my weekly list of the most interesting tweets I found—with a little commentary from me. Small Failures Prevent Big Disasters (Antifragility) If you protect a system, a company, or a child from small failures or stressful situations, most likely you’re setting them up for a larger failure in the future. Ability to deal with smaller/safer failures stresses is important for the system/company/child to grow up to be much stronger. Nicholas Nissim Taleb’s book “
Thanks Ashish. Loved this paragraph from The Guardian's review of Foolproof:
> Foolproof examines this phenomenon through a range of telling examples. Constructing giant levees to contain mighty rivers makes people feel safe enough to build on the floodplain, making the consequences of future floods far worse. Introducing helmets and face masks in American football has increased some kinds of injury, because players can use their heads as a battering ram. Risk-taking is natural behaviour, “inherent to the human condition”, says Ip as we discuss his thesis; and he doesn’t have a neat, catchy solution to the challenge of reducing the dangers of modern life. But he does argue that we need to take a more grown-up approach, accepting that some risks are worth taking, even if that means the occasional disaster occurs. “We have to be realistic about what we can achieve: taking risks is fundamental to economic progress,” Ip explains.
Excellent post, as always! Thank you :)
Regarding antifragility, a related book you might enjoy reading is Foolproof, by Greg Ip.
Thanks Ashish. Loved this paragraph from The Guardian's review of Foolproof:
> Foolproof examines this phenomenon through a range of telling examples. Constructing giant levees to contain mighty rivers makes people feel safe enough to build on the floodplain, making the consequences of future floods far worse. Introducing helmets and face masks in American football has increased some kinds of injury, because players can use their heads as a battering ram. Risk-taking is natural behaviour, “inherent to the human condition”, says Ip as we discuss his thesis; and he doesn’t have a neat, catchy solution to the challenge of reducing the dangers of modern life. But he does argue that we need to take a more grown-up approach, accepting that some risks are worth taking, even if that means the occasional disaster occurs. “We have to be realistic about what we can achieve: taking risks is fundamental to economic progress,” Ip explains.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/12/foolproof-greg-ip-review-biggest-risk-is-safety