What he calls the central Triad of exposures — Fragile, Robustness and Antifragile — has the analogy in the Chinese trinity of Female (Ying), Golden Mean (中庸) and Male (Yang).

The Confucian concept of Golden Mean seeks to avoid extremes and take the safe middle path.

But Taleb’s insight shows us why the Golden Mean gets people into trouble, because by playing safe, the mainstream ignores the uncertainty of Black Swan events that could eventually damage the system as a whole.

Prudence and conservatism through adopting the Golden Mean prevents the practitioner from adopting “antifragile or good high risk-high payoff” strategies that would compensate for the uncertain unknown bad Black Swan events. A Buddhist would immediately recognize the need to build up good deeds to compensate for the bad deeds that may befall oneself.

By not taking risks, Chinese dynasties that adopted Golden Mean strategies became closed societies that eventually imploded when disaster struck. On the other hand, in the run up to the Industrial Revolution, Western societies took large risks with high payoffs, in science, technology and even colonialism.

via Chinese minds move away from conservatism toward antifragility – The China Post.