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Index
Title Page Copyright Contents Antifragile
Title Page Copyright Contents Chapter Summaries and Map Prologue Appendix: The Triad, or A Map of the World and Things Along the Three Properties Book I: The Antifragile: An Introduction
Chapter 1. Between Damocles and Hydra
Half of Life Has No Name Please Behead Me
On the Necessity of Naming
Proto-Antifragility Domain Independence Is Domain Dependent
Chapter 2. Overcompensation and Overreaction Everywhere
How to Win a Horse Race
Antifragile Responses as Redundancy
On the Antifragility of Riots, Love, and Other Unexpected Beneficiaries of Stress
Please Ban My Book: The Antifragility of Information Get Another Job
Chapter 3. The Cat and the Washing Machine
The Complex Stressors Are Information
Equilibrium, Not Again
Crimes Against Children
Punished by Translation Touristification The Secret Thirst for Chance
Chapter 4. What Kills Me Makes Others Stronger
Antifragility by Layers
Evolution and Unpredictability Organisms Are Populations and Populations Are Organisms
Thank You, Errors
Learning from the Mistakes of Others How to Become Mother Teresa
Why the Aggregate Hates the Individual What Does Not Kill Me Kills Others
Me and Us National Entrepreneur Day
Book II: Modernity and the Denial of Antifragility
Chapter 5. The Souk and the Office Building
Two Types of Professions
Lenin in Zurich
Bottom-up Variations Away from Extremistan
The Great Turkey Problem
Twelve Thousand Years
War, Prison, or Both Pax Romana War or No War
Chapter 6. Tell Them I Love (Some) Randomness
Hungry Donkeys
Political Annealing
That Time Bomb Called Stability
The Second Step: Do (Small) Wars Save Lives? What to Tell the Foreign Policy Makers
What Do We Call Here Modernity?
Chapter 7. Naive Intervention
Intervention and Iatrogenics
First, Do No Harm The Opposite of Iatrogenics Iatrogenics in High Places Can a Whale Fly Like an Eagle? Not Doing Nothing Non-Naive Interventionism
In Praise of Procrastination—the Fabian Kind Neuroticism in Industrial Proportions
A Legal Way to Kill People Media-Driven Neuroticism
The State Can Help—When Incompetent
France Is Messier than You Think Sweden and the Large State
Catalyst-as-Cause Confusion
Chapter 8. Prediction as a Child of Modernity
Ms. Bré Has Competitors The Predictive Plus or Minus Bad Teeth The Idea of Becoming a Non-Turkey No More Black Swans
Book III: A Nonpredictive View of the World
Chapter 9. Fat Tony and the Fragilistas
Indolent Fellow Travelers
The Importance of Lunch The Antifragility of Libraries
On Suckers and Nonsuckers
Loneliness What the Nonpredictor Can Predict
Chapter 10. Seneca’s Upside and Downside
Is This Really Serious? Less Downside from Life Stoicism’s Emotional Robustification The Domestication of Emotions How to Become the Master The Foundational Asymmetry
Chapter 11. Never Marry the Rock Star
On the Irreversibility of Broken Packages Seneca’s Barbell
The Accountant and the Rock Star Away from the Golden Middle The Domestication of Uncertainty
Book IV: Optionality, Technology, and The Intelligence of Antifragility
Do You Really Know Where You Are Going?
The Teleological Fallacy America’s Principal Asset
Chapter 12. Thales’ Sweet Grapes
Option and Asymmetry
The Options of Sweet Grapes Saturday Evening in London Your Rent Asymmetry Things That Like Dispersion
The Thalesian and the Aristotelian
How to Be Stupid Nature and Options The Rationality Life Is Long Gamma Roman Politics Likes Optionality Next
Chapter 13. Lecturing Birds on How to Fly
Once More, Less Is More Mind the Gaps Search and How Errors Can Be Investments Creative and Uncreative Destructions The Soviet-Harvard Department of Ornithology Epiphenomena
Greed as a Cause Debunking Epiphenomena Cherry-picking (or the Fallacy of Confirmation)
Chapter 14. When Two Things Are Not the “Same Thing”
Where Are the Stressors? L’Art pour l’Art, to Learn for Learning’s Sake Polished Dinner Partners The Green Lumber Fallacy
How Fat Tony Got Rich (and Fat)
Conflation Prometheus and Epimetheus
Chapter 15. History Written by the Losers
The Evidence Staring at Us Is It Like Cooking? The Industrial Revolution Governments Should Spend on Nonteleological Tinkering, Not Research The Case in Medicine
Matt Ridley’s Anti-Teleological Argument Corporate Teleology
The Inverse Turkey Problem
To Fail Seven Times, Plus or Minus Two
The Charlatan, the Academic, and the Showman
Chapter 16. A Lesson in Disorder
The Ecological and the Ludic
The Touristification of the Soccer Mom
An Antifragile (Barbell) Education
Chapter 17. Fat Tony Debates Socrates
Euthyphro Fat Tony Versus Socrates Primacy of Definitional Knowledge
Mistaking the Unintelligible for the Unintelligent Tradition
The Sucker-Nonsucker Distinction
Fragility, Not Probability Conflation of Events and Exposure
Conclusion to Book IV
What Will Happen Next?
Book V: The Nonlinear and The Nonlinear
On the Importance of Attics Chapter 18. On the Difference Between a Large Stone and a Thousand Pebbles
A Simple Rule to Detect the Fragile
Why Is Fragility Nonlinear? When to Smile and When to Frown Why Is the Concave Hurt by Black Swan Events?
Traffic in New York
Someone Call New York City Officials
Where More Is Different
A “Balanced Meal” Run, Don’t Walk
Small May Be Ugly, It Is Certainly Less Fragile
How to Be Squeezed Kerviel and Micro-Kerviel How to Exit a Movie Theater
Projects and Prediction
Why Planes Don’t Arrive Early Wars, Deficits, and Deficits
Where the “Efficient” Is Not Efficient
Pollution and Harm to the Planet The Nonlinearity of Wealth Conclusion
Chapter 19. The Philosopher’s Stone and Its Inverse
How to Detect Who Will Go Bust
The Idea of Positive and Negative Model Error
How to Lose a Grandmother Now the Philosopher’s Stone
How to Transform Gold into Mud: The Inverse Philosopher’s Stone
Book VI: Via Negativa
Where Is the Charlatan? Subtractive Knowledge Barbells, Again
Less Is More
Chapter 20. Time and Fragility
From Simonides to Jensen Learning to Subtract
Technology at Its Best
To Age in Reverse: The Lindy Effect A Few Mental Biases
Neomania and Treadmill Effects
Architecture and the Irreversible Neomania
Wall to Wall Windows Metrification
Turning Science into Journalism What Should Break Prophets and the Present Empedocles’ Dog
What Does Not Make Sense
Chapter 21. Medicine, Convexity, and Opacity
How to Argue in an Emergency Room First Principle of Iatrogenics (Empiricism) Second Principle of Iatrogenics (Nonlinearity in Response)
Jensen’s Inequality in Medicine
Burying the Evidence
The Never-ending History of Turkey Situations
Nature’s Opaque Logic
Guilty or Innocent Plead Ignorance of Biology: Phenomenology The Ancients Were More Caustic How to Medicate Half the Population The “Rigor of Mathematics” in Medicine Next
Chapter 22. To Live Long, but Not Too Long
Life Expectancy and Convexity
Subtraction Adds to Your Life The Iatrogenics of Money Religion and Naive Interventionism
If It’s Wednesday, I Must Be Vegan
Convexity Effects and Random Nutrition How to Eat Yourself Walk-Deprived I Want to Live Forever
Book VII: The Ethics of Fragility and Antifragility
Chapter 23. Skin in the Game: Antifragility and Optionality at the Expense of Others
Hammurabi The Talker’s Free Option
Postdicting The Stiglitz Syndrome The Problem of Frequency, or How to Lose Arguments The Right Decision for the Wrong Reason
The Ancients and the Stiglitz Syndrome
To Burn One’s Vessels How Poetry Can Kill You The Problem of Insulation Champagne Socialism Soul in the Game
Options, Antifragility, and Social Fairness
The Robert Rubin Free Option Which Adam Smith?
The Antifragility and Ethics of (Large) Corporations
Artisans, Marketing, and the Cheapest to Deliver Lawrence of Arabia or Meyer Lansky Next
Chapter 24. Fitting Ethics to a Profession
Wealth Without Independence The Professionals and the Collective The Ethical and the Legal
Casuistry as Optionality
Big Data and the Researcher’s Option The Tyranny of the Collective
Chapter 25. Conclusion
Epilogue Glossary Appendix I Appendix II Dedication Acknowledgments Additional Notes, Afterthoughts, and Further Reading Bibliography
The Black Swan
Title Page Copyright Contents Note to the Second Edition Prologue
On the Plumage of Birds
What You Do Not Know Experts and “Empty Suits” Learning to Learn
A New Kind of Ingratitude Life Is Very Unusual Plato and the Nerd Too Dull to Write About The Bottom Line
Chapters Map
Part One - Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary, or How We Seek Validation
Chapter One - The Apprenticeship of An Empirical Skeptic
Anatomy of a Black Swan
On Walking Walks “Paradise” Evaporated The Starred Night
History and the Triplet of Opacity
Nobody Knows What’s Going On History Does Not Crawl, It Jumps Dear Diary: On History Running Backward Education in a Taxicab
Clusters
Where Is the Show?
8¾ Lbs Later
The Four-Letter Word of Independence Limousine Philosopher
Chapter Two - Yevgenia’s Black Swan Chapter Three - The Speculator and the Prostitute
The Best (Worst) Advice Beware the Scalable
The Advent of Scalability
Scalability and Globalization Travels Inside Mediocristan
The Strange Country of Extremistan Extremistan and Knowledge Wild and Mild The Tyranny of the Accident
Chapter Four - One Thousand and One Days, or How Not to Be a Sucker
How to Learn from the Turkey
Trained to Be Dull A Black Swan Is Relative to Knowledge
A Brief History of the Black Swan Problem
Sextus the (Alas) Empirical Algazel The Skeptic, Friend of Religion I Don’t Want to Be a Turkey They Want to Live in Mediocristan
Chapter Five - Confirmation Shmonfirmation!
Zoogles Are Not All Boogles Evidence Negative Empiricism
Counting to Three Saw Another Red Mini! Not Everything Back to Mediocristan
Chapter Six - The Narrative Fallacy
On the Causes of My Rejection of Causes Splitting Brains
A Little More Dopamine Andrey Nikolayevich’s Rule A Better Way to Die
Remembrance of Things Not Quite Past
The Madman’s Narrative Narrative and Therapy
To Be Wrong with Infinite Precision
Dispassionate Science
The Sensational and the Black Swan
Black Swan Blindness The Pull of the Sensational
The Shortcuts
Beware the Brain How to Avert the Narrative Fallacy
Chapter Seven - Living in the Antechamber of Hope
Peer Cruelty
Where the Relevant Is the Sensational Nonlinearities Process over Results Human Nature, Happiness, and Lumpy Rewards The Antechamber of Hope Inebriated by Hope The Sweet Trap of Anticipation When You Need the Bastiani Fortress
El desierto de los tártaros
Bleed or Blowup
Chapter Eight - Giacomo Casanova’s Unfailing Luck: The Problem of Silent Evidence
The Story of the Drowned Worshippers The Cemetery of Letters
How to Become a Millionaire in Ten Steps
A Health Club for Rats
Vicious Bias More Hidden Applications The Evolution of the Swimmer’s Body
What You See and What You Don’t See
Doctors
The Teflon-style Protection of Giacomo Casanova
“I Am a Risk Taker”
I Am a Black Swan: The Anthropic Bias
The Cosmetic Because
Chapter Nine - The Ludic Fallacy, or the Uncertainty of the Nerd
Fat Tony
Non-Brooklyn John
Lunch at Lake Como
The Uncertainty of the Nerd Gambling with the Wrong Dice
Wrapping Up Part One
The Cosmetic Rises to the Surface Distance from Primates
Part Two - We Just Can’t Predict
From Yogi Berra to Henri Poincaré Chapter Ten - The Scandal of Prediction
On the Vagueness of Catherine’s Lover Count Black Swan Blindness Redux
Guessing and Predicting
Information Is Bad for Knowledge The Expert Problem, or the Tragedy of the Empty Suit
What Moves and What Does Not Move How to Have the Last Laugh Events Are Outlandish Herding Like Cattle I Was “Almost” Right Reality? What For?
“Other Than That,” It Was Okay
The Beauty of Technology: Excel Spreadsheets The Character of Prediction Errors
Don’t Cross a River if It Is (on Average) Four Feet Deep
Get Another Job At JFK
Chapter Eleven - How to Look for Bird Poop
How to Look for Bird Poop
Inadvertent Discoveries A Solution Waiting for a Problem Keep Searching
How to Predict Your Predictions! The Nth Billiard Ball
Third Republic–Style Decorum The Three Body Problem They Still Ignore Hayek How Not to Be a Nerd Academic Libertarianism Prediction and Free Will
The Grueness of Emerald That Great Anticipation Machine
Chapter Twelve - Epistemocracy, a Dream
Monsieur de Montaigne, Epistemocrat Epistemocracy The Past’s Past, and the Past’s Future
Prediction, Misprediction, and Happiness Helenus and the Reverse Prophecies The Melting Ice Cube Once Again, Incomplete Information What They Call Knowledge
Chapter Thirteen - Appelles the Painter, or What Do You Do If You Cannot Predict?
Advice Is Cheap, Very Cheap
Being a Fool in the Right Places Be Prepared
The Idea of Positive Accident
Volatility and Risk of Black Swan Barbell Strategy “Nobody Knows Anything” The Great Asymmetry
Part Three - Those Gray Swans of Extremistan
Chapter Fourteen - From Mediocristan to Extremistan, and Back
The World Is Unfair The Matthew Effect Lingua Franca Ideas and Contagions Nobody Is Safe in Extremistan
A Brooklyn Frenchman The Long Tail Naïve Globalization
Reversals Away from Extremistan
Chapter Fifteen - The Bell Curve, That Great Intellectual Fraud
The Gaussian and the Mandelbrotian
The Increase in the Decrease The Mandelbrotian What to Remember Inequality Extremistan and the 80/20 Rule Grass and Trees How Coffee Drinking Can Be Safe Love of Certainties How to Cause Catastrophes
Quételet’s Average Monster
Golden Mediocrity God’s Error Poincaré to the Rescue Eliminating Unfair Influence “The Greeks Would Have Deified It” “Yes/No” Only Please
A (Literary) Thought Experiment on Where the Bell Curve Comes From
Those Comforting Assumptions “The Ubiquity of the Gaussian”
Chapter Sixteen - The Aesthetics of Randomness
The Poet of Randomness The Platonicity of Triangles
The Geometry of Nature Fractality A Visual Approach to Extremistan/Mediocristan Pearls to Swine
The Logic of Fractal Randomness (with a Warning)
The Problem of the Upper Bound Beware the Precision The Water Puddle Revisited From Representation to Reality
Once Again, Beware the Forecasters
Once Again, a Happy Solution
Where Is the Gray Swan?
Chapter Seventeen - Locke’s Madmen, or Bell Curves in the Wrong Places
Only Fifty Years The Clerks’ Betrayal Anyone Can Become President More Horror Confirmation It Was Just a Black Swan
How to “Prove” Things
Chapter Eighteen - The Uncertainty of the Phony
Ludic Fallacy Redux
Find the Phony Can Philosophers Be Dangerous to Society? The Problem of Practice
How Many Wittgensteins Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?
Where Is Popper When You Need Him? The Bishop and the Analyst Easier Than You Think: The Problem of Decision Under Skepticism
Part Four - The End
Chapter Nineteen - Half and Half, Or How to Get Even with the Black Swan
When Missing a Train Is Painless The End
Epilogue: Yevgenia’s White Swans Postscript Essay: On Robustness and Fragility, Deeper Philosophical and Empirical Reflections
I—Learning from Mother Nature, the Oldest and the Wisest
On Slow but Long Walks
My Mistakes
Robustness and Fragility
Redundancy as Insurance Big is Ugly—and Fragile Climate Change and “Too Big” Polluters Species Density The Other Types of Redundancy Distinctions Without a Difference, Differences Without a Distinction
A Society Robust to Error
II—Why I Do All This Walking, or How Systems Become Fragile
Another Few Barbells
Beware Manufactured Stability
III—Margaritas Ante Porcos
Main Errors in Understanding the Message
How to Expunge One’s Crimes A Desert Crossing
IV—Asperger and the Ontological Black Swan
Asperger Probability Future Blindness Redux Probability has to be Subjective
Probability on a Thermometer
V—(Perhaps) The Most Useful Problem in the History of Modern Philosophy
Living in Two Dimensions The Dependence on Theory for Rare Events
Epimenides the Cretan An Undecidability Theorem It’s the Consequences … From Reality to Representation Proof in the Flesh
Fallacy of the Single Event Probability
Psychology of Perception of Deviations
The Problem of Induction and Causation in the Complex Domain
Induction Driving the School Bus Blindfolded
VI—The Fourth Quadrant, the Solution to that Most Useful of Problems
David Freedman, RIP Decisions The Fourth Quadrant, a Map
VII—What to Do with the Fourth Quadrant
Not Using the Wrong Map: The Notion of Iatrogenics
Negative Advice Iatrogenics and The Nihilism Label
Phronetic Rules: What is Wise to do (or not do) in Real Life to Mitigate the Fourth Quadrant if you can’t Barbell?
VIII—The Ten Principles for a Black-Swan-Robust Society IX—Amor Fati: How to Become Indestructible
Nihil Perditi
Glossary Dedication Acknowledgments for the First Edition Notes Bibliography
Fooled by Randomness
Title Page Copyright Contents Preface Chapter Summaries Prologue PART I
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
PART II
Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
PART III
Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue Postscript Dedication Acknowledgments for the First Edition Acknowledgments for the Updated Second Edition A Trip to the Library: Notes and Reading Recommendations References Footnotes
The Bed of Procrustes
Title Page Copyright Contents Procrustes Notice Preludes Counter Narratives Matters Ontological The Sacred and the Profane Chance, Success, Happiness, and Stoicism Charming and Less Charming Sucker Problems Theseus, or Living the Paleo Life The Republic of Letters The Universal and the Particular Fooled by Randomness Aesthetics Ethics Robustness and Antifragility The Ludic Fallacy and Domain Dependence Epistemology and Subtractive Knowledge The Scandal of Prediction Being a Philosopher and Managing to Remain One Economic Life and Other Very Vulgar Subjects The Sage, the Weak, and the Magnificent The Implicit and the Explicit On The Varieties of Love and Nonlove The End Postface Dedication Acknowledgments
Other Books by This Author About the Author
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