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Antifragile


WifWaf

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Reference is made to this recent question by Vern, and to this whole thread from last year:

I have been reading a book called Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Random House, 2012), by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  It’s a rich, intense work, but its main takeaway for this post is that, instead of basing one’s decisions on predictions of the future, one can learn to reliably bet against others’ predictions here in the present.  The author likens this to measuring the strength of the plainly visible string holding up the Sword of Damocles, rather than guessing when it will fall.  Doing so helps us avoid relying on the weakest strings around us.  This theme resonates to many domains, including ours: as a business advisor (or at least a devil’s advocate), a CO who examines a PM’s risk register should consider this alternate viewpoint.  At the highest levels, the Congressional Budget Office could consider taking this alternate viewpoint for a living.

Respect for the ancients is another theme of the book.  Technology is best when it removes (makes obsolete) or hides existing technology, the author says.  Think about that.  Shoes are essentially the same blocks as they were when ancient Egyptians were mummified in them.  Shoes on a nature hike, where we want to feel the ground, are unfortunately like wearing casts on our feet, cutting us off from one of our senses.  So, the best shoe technology is coming from the companies that are innovating to just give us the callouses of a Native American hunter-gatherer, and removing all the other technological fluff.  I myself hate needing to rely on something unnatural and clunky to live my life (e.g. a Peloton bike just to work out), so this certainly made sense to me in today’s trend-driven American markets.  You can do a Google search for the Latin “via negativa” to learn more on this subject - it is the richest part of the book.

Well into the book, the author makes a statement that lawmakers need to subtract problematic laws.  In the same chapter, Steve Jobs is quoted on innovation when he said “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.”  The context of this quote in Antifragile is that it is used to comment on technological innovation mostly, but then the subject of lawmaking is finally revisited at the very end of the book.  Complex systems of law are stated to be benefitting former regulators only, at the expense of our country and its taxpayers.  While the context of this revisit is in regards to bankers and the Federal Reserve, I could not help but think of our own sector’s revolving door problem.  “The more complicated the regulation, the more prone to arbitrages by insiders,” he says.  Yea, I enjoyed this book.

To boil down what I grasp now after reading Antifragile, it’s this.  We live in a time where everyone wants to set our country in their own priority’s direction through innovative ideas, and at the same time everyone thinks they can predict the future using data overload.  After reading this book, my learned opinion is, though, that the lawmakers we elect should be those that are humble enough to see their own ignorance of the future, and instead want to focus their efforts on examining and reinforcing the string holding up that sword over our collective head.

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The writing style is a bit wily but after enough pages it made an acolyte of me and became endearing (and often humorous).  After a while in the limelight, this author has become a savant.  See The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2007), by Taleb.  See how that term has since been used by the learned:

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/air-force/2022/06/air-force-thinking-of-new-ways-to-handle-black-swan-events-in-acquisition/?readmore=1

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On 8/10/2022 at 7:49 AM, WifWaf said:

In the same chapter, Steve Jobs is quoted on innovation when he said “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.”

@WifWaf This resonates with me considerably with where I am in my career right now.  Most people know about the famous Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.  If people haven't read it, they should.  I read it about ten years ago, but can remember significant parts of it well.  It unfolds as a saga of sorts, with Jobs as an illustrative antihero.  In the preface, Isaacson described the beginnings of the book something like this.  Jobs approached him saying I will give you the first opportunity to write a biography about me.  Isaacson replied something to the effect of "and what makes you think I would want to write a book about you?", to which Jobs responded, "I'm dying."

Jobs was forced out of Apple, the company he founded with Steve Wozniak.  After the company floundered under the tutelage of his successors, Jobs seized upon an opportunity brought about by a significant dip in Apple's stock price to convince the board to appoint him interim CEO.  He later ended up replacing that board and admitting it was he who precipitated the stock devaluation by selling over a million and a half of his own shares at once.  The net result was that he regained control of the company he had co-founded, from which he had previously been ousted.  Topical to this history of events is a report in the news this week that Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway announced that Apple is now their largest stock holding.  The Oracle of Omaha, a nonagenarian, has put his faith and wallet in a company founded by a man who was regularly criticized for being too consumed by details and delaying projects more often than he moved them along, in essence, practicing the principles of via negativa.

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2 hours ago, Guardian said:

Jobs was forced out of Apple, the company he founded with Steve Wozniak.  After the company floundered under the tutelage of his successors, Jobs seized upon an opportunity brought about by a significant dip in Apple's stock price to convince the board to appoint him interim CEO.  He later ended up replacing that board and admitting it was he who precipitated the stock devaluation by selling over a million and a half of his own shares at once.  The net result was...Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway announced that Apple is now their largest stock holding.

My emphasis above certainly looks like "gaining from disruption."  Thanks Guardian!

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