Is anyone out there irritated with the concept of anti-fragility? It seems to me to unnecessarily merge three different concepts: evolution by selection, learning, going out from local optimum by means of random stimulations. The claim that there are systems that benefit from disorder, exactly as stated, to me has only one instance, not even a real thing: Project Orion.
That’s a fun challenge. It was hard to try to summarize the motivation behind the idea of antifragility in such a restricted vocabulary. Here is my attempt:
Things sometimes break. This happens when outside forces cause bad changes to it and to the world it acts in. Things that this can happen to are not things you can put much trust in. It would be a lot better to have something that does not change because of things happening to it, or even better, one that gets better the more those bad things happen to it. It is a good idea to make the things you have be of this sort, but that can not be done all of the time. To find things that match this idea is not easy, but it is true that there are some situations in the real world where this does happen.
I think you want to separate out “bad” from change.Things sometimes break, this happens when outside forces cause changes to it and the world it acts in. We call a thing fragile when most changes are bad from the perspective of the thing. EG ice is fragile because changes in temperature, motion, etc. will cause it to break. Anti-fragility is when the thing is designed such that the biggest possible changes do not break it.
I see what you are saying, but the whole point behind anti-fragility is that change is for good, not bad. By default, in fragile things, change is bad. But in antifragile things, that change is harnessed for good.
Hm. The best way to clearly demarcate that would probably to move the word “bad” from describing the word “change”, and put it as part of the first sentence.
Things sometimes break, and that is a bad thing that you do not want happening. It happens when outside forces cause changes to it and to the world it acts in. …
Is anyone out there irritated with the concept of anti-fragility?
It seems to me to unnecessarily merge three different concepts: evolution by selection, learning, going out from local optimum by means of random stimulations.
The claim that there are systems that benefit from disorder, exactly as stated, to me has only one instance, not even a real thing: Project Orion.
Can you explain the concept of antifragility using only 1000 most common English words?
That’s a fun challenge. It was hard to try to summarize the motivation behind the idea of antifragility in such a restricted vocabulary. Here is my attempt:
I think you want to separate out “bad” from change.Things sometimes break, this happens when outside forces cause changes to it and the world it acts in. We call a thing fragile when most changes are bad from the perspective of the thing. EG ice is fragile because changes in temperature, motion, etc. will cause it to break. Anti-fragility is when the thing is designed such that the biggest possible changes do not break it.
I see what you are saying, but the whole point behind anti-fragility is that change is for good, not bad. By default, in fragile things, change is bad. But in antifragile things, that change is harnessed for good.
Hm. The best way to clearly demarcate that would probably to move the word “bad” from describing the word “change”, and put it as part of the first sentence.
This is my attempt: