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[book review]

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (Paperback)

The central idea is that there are things that improve from being harmed. The opposite, fragile, is easy to understand and is one that we are already familiar with. The fragile are things which are analogous to coffee cups on tables, they are prone to be knocked over and cracking. A fragile parcel is one that should be handled with great care, while a robust parcel is one which doesn't care. An antifragile parcel would be one that wants to be abused.

The author also continues the theme that humans often over-plan and under estimate the severity of harm. He illustrates that trying to predict future harm can be very difficult and that the usual methods of error estimation are often of no help. Errors and poor design can be further compounded from large sizes and faster speeds, as well as believing that a system can be completely deterministic and knowable. His solution to all problems is to begin with a smart design which is less prone to fragility and is robust to the errors (but not risk-free).

I've read over many other reviews and note a lot of people had difficulty with understanding the book. I actually found the book to be comprehensible so at first I was surprised; however, I have had the benefit of reading his comments on his Facebook page. He posts frequently and has covered all the book topics at length. When you first encounter the ideas they may not make sense because he often uses phrases which are specific to his experience in finance. Once you are familiar with these concepts then it is fine. I appreciate that statement won't bring any comfort to someone who bought this book and doesn't have this knowledge. Therefore, I'd suggest that people may want to have a read over his Facebook fan page (his previous books help too). If you are unsure about terms such as fat tails, fragility, optionality, left tail, convexity, gamma, then I'd definitely recommend getting familiar with those terms as they appear a lot. Gamma is a somewhat strange quantity so I wouldn't necessarily strive for complete comprehension but rather try to get a minimal understanding of it.

If you are interested in risk, uncertainty and randomness then this book is likely to appeal. If you are from a maths or science background then you should cope without too much strain but it may require some background reading. Stephen Hawking wrote a best seller and I'd wager that most readers didn't fully comprehend it but that doesn't make it any less of a great book.