Antifragile by Taleb: The Most Overrated Book I Ever Read

I’ve heard of Taleb and this book specifically for ages, but every time I saw any content from him, he looked like such a gigantic ass that I’ve always refused to read his work. But I finally caved in. I’ve always seen him being referenced as highly intelligent and worth reading, so I figured I would suck it up.

The premise of the book is incredibly simple. There is a spectrum of fragility. On one side, things are fragile. They break easily with disorder and randomness — for example, a ceramic plate. Then in the middle, there are things that are robust; they can withstand chaos. It would be difficult to destroy a titanium ball, for instance. On the other side of the spectrum, there would be things that are anti-fragile. It is not that they stand randomness or risk, but that they improve with it. Hydra is a mythical illustration of this characteristic — with each head that is cut off, it grows two instead, becoming even stronger. The book also presents other concepts tangent to antifragility, like the problem of relying on theory instead of practice, interventionism, academic institutions and culture, and many more.

The concept is well described but often feels overkill. First of all, it was painful to read, especially in the beginning, as it was introducing the topic and himself. I was hoping that his reputation was overblown, but it wasn’t. He was exactly what I thought he was — arrogant, cocky, and a general asshole. It was also incredibly repetitive.

I thought about quitting the book in almost every chapter. But the ideas did have some value, so I convinced myself to keep going. Fortunately, the book did get better after the first third or so, but at the same time, I started losing the energy to convince myself to keep going and eventually gave up about mid-way. In the 200+ books I have read, this one will be included in a group of less than 5, which will be left unfinished.

Even with the author aside, there was something that I didn’t like about the content itself, though. Something that really made me want to read Taleb was that he likes to find and describe patterns that cross several fields. This interconnectedness of things and finding truths that transcend disciplines is something I share, so I was excited about that aspect. However, this book was a good reminder of its danger. Whenever you’re crossing fields, you are increasing the risk that you’re misinterpreting something or overfitting phenomena in that field for your particular hypothesis (or even a subconscious pattern recognition). Some of the examples that he gave really weren’t as strong as he thinks they were. And in fact, some of them were pure garbage. And, of course, the ones that I know for sure were garbage in a field that I work in: nutrition. And obviously, that is no coincidence. I just happened to be more informed to notice the flaws, which then invites the skepticism of every other example he gives that I just happen to be dumb enough to not realize its shortcomings.

Overall it’s not a terrible book. It has good ideas, but boy, they come at a price. It’s repetitive, it’s written by a major cunt with a superiority complex, and overfits everything he can find to support his idea. I’m a bit torn over it — I regret not finishing the book, and somehow at the same time, I regret wasting my time even reading half of it. Unless you are a fan of his, I think people will be better off by reading his ideas somewhere else, even if it’s a bloody Youtube video or Medium blog post. They are not that complicated, and you will avoid some of the pain that I went through.

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Tiago V.F.