Q&A: “CURT: WHAT DOES TALEB’S ANTI-FRAGILE MEAN?” It means very simply the follo

Q&A: “CURT: WHAT DOES TALEB’S ANTI-FRAGILE MEAN?”

It means very simply the following:

Unlike physical objects, organisms and networks of organisms, strengthen themselves by allocating resources to different systems when they are subject to a variety of stresses and shocks, but does not devote resources when subject to continuous stimuli in the absence of stresses and shocks – the regularity we have produced and desire to produce in industrial-era modernity creates disinformation in biological systems, and as a consequence, fragility, and worse, fragility-cascades.

This applies to individual organisms (cells), communities of organisms (organs), entities (living creatures), Communities (schools, flocks, packs, herds, tribes etc), the organizations(people) we build together, the institutions(human processes) we build together, and the information(knowledge) we build together.

Unfortunately, we humans seek to computationally (rationally) make life easier for ourselves by creating regularity (predictability) for ourselves – but it is regularity that weakens us.

Over the past century, in all the social ‘sciences’ including finance, economics, politics, and law, we have been practicing pseudoscience by calculating probabilities instead of calculating fragilities – when it is unpredictable, large, irregularities or events that cause fragile systems to fail catastrophically causing cascades of externalities.

Instead of, or in addition to, calculating probabilities (optimistic bias), we could calculate fragility(pessimistic bias). And expend resources on ensuring against fragility-cascades in the face of black swan events.

In my work among other things, I argue that truthfulness demands that we do both: “full accounting” (full disclosure). And that we can and should use the law to protect the informational commons from pollution (legal “Abusus”) just as we protect the air, sea, land, flora, fauna, and our arts and monuments.

The “Leftist” counter proposition is that as long as one has the ability to print money then all shocks can be overcome. And that the good done in the interim compensates for the bad produced later on, and that we are wealthier later on and can fix those consequences. (I agree with Taleb in particular regarding the mainstream left economists he criticizes. Although I think I probably say so in different terms.)

But this has turned out to be false in finance and economics since 2008. The Austrian’s were right. All we do is kick the can further down the road. In my work, I try to show that we have done the same to genetic, normative, institutional, monumental, and territorial capital. And that while our financial system is fragile, and it will break first, the rest of the systems are equally fragile now.

Which is why I argue we civil or international war is both easy to envision because of the fear caused by fragility, and the consequences unimaginable enough to be just ‘terrifying’.

Cheers

(More on similarities between Taleb and Doolittle here:)

https://www.facebook.com/curt.doolittle/posts/10154574171777264