I have read “The Black Swan” some years ago and wanted to read something else from the same author.
I took me a while to read the book, it is dense and wide, but interesting nonetheless.
Antifragility can be used for all aspects of life: economy, health, etc.
As it was an ebook, I didnt take notes, but there are several things I remember. Antifragile is not too flexible (you can’t keep your form) and not too regid (dinosaur). I like a lot the example between Extremistan (our current world) vs Mediocristan (antifragile world). An antifragile world is not perfect, is built to cope with problems so you can be prepared for the big ones or avoid the big ones. It was very funny the example of Switzerland, nobody knows the president of the country, but most of us know the president of USA, UK, Germany, France, etc. Switzerland is an the example of Mediocristan at political level, the country has several cantons, they govern themselves, they deal with local issues locally. The idea, is the “too big” too fail is wrong, and size doesnt assure success or survival. War is a sensitive topic, we have big wars, because we dont have small ones, so the little issues, escalate with time and they blow up big time. I think Italy in the Renaissance is a clear example of that, Italy wasn’t a country, just powerful city-states focus in trading. There was a spike in science, art, architecture without precedent but the cities fought constantly but never to annihilation. So this is a bit curios and a bit difficult to digest. But it “could” be logical, so get stronger through difficult things: weights, problems, study, etc.
I like the references to Stoicism and other religions giving a philosophical touch to the overall argument. And it is funny the attacks in Socrates.
Another thing, that was interesting, it something has been around 100 years (books, religion, etc), it is likely to last that amount of time again. So this is a recommendation for books to read…