Category Archives: Antifragile

Commentary on the statement: “Studying neurobiology to understand humans…

Commentary on the statement: “Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.”

(from ANTIFRAGILE)

When it comes to narratives, the brain seems to be the last province of the theoretician- charlatan. Add neurosomething to a field, and suddenly it rises in respectability and becomes more convincing as people

now have the illusion of a strong causal link— yet the brain is too complex for that; it is both the most complex part of the human anatomy and the one that seems most susceptible to sucker- causation. (<>see my technical Discussion of nonlinearities and high dimensional matrices</>) Christopher

Chabris and Daniel Simons brought to my attention the evidence I had been looking for: whatever theory has a reference in it to brain circuitry seems more “scientific” and more convincing, even when it is just randomized psychoneurobabble.

(Discussion of phenomenology vs theory)

… I do not want to rely on biology beyond

the minimum required (not in the theoretical sense)— and I believe that my strength will lie there. I just want to understand as little as possible to be able to look at regularities of experience. So the modus operandi in every venture is to remain as robust as possible

to changes in theories (let me repeat that my deference to Mother Nature is entirely statistical and risk- management- based, i.e., again, grounded in the notion of fragility). The doctor and medical essayist James Le Fanu showed how our understanding of the biological processes was coupled with a decline of pharmaceutical discoveries, as if rationalistic theories were blinding and somehow a handicap.

In other words, we have in biology a green lumber problem!

via Commentary on the statement: “Studying… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

OFF-TOPIC(S). Antifragile is going into paperback in January (U.S.)

OFF-TOPIC(S). Antifragile is going into paperback in January (U.S.) . I looked at revising it. Other books felt very incomplete when reread. For Fooled by Randomness, I added >80 pages in 2003 and 2005. For the Black Swan, I added >100 pages. For The Bed of Procrustes, I would like to add 40 pages. For Antifragile, I tried very, very hard, but could not find a compelling reason to add anything, so I didn’t even increase by a single line (just a few typos and one single footnote).

via OFF-TOPIC(S). Antifragile is going into… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Antifragile /  GettingStronger.org

How does the barbell strategy apply to health?  A great example is combining occasional, high intensity weight lifting or interval training, alternating with long stretches of rest, recovery and  ”doing nothing”.  The intermittent stress of lifting an extreme weight pushes the body to overcompensate and prepare for an even greater future challenge, but the interlude of rest and recovery is restorative and avoids the downside of chronic overuse.   We can extend this idea of a bimodal “barbell” strategy to practices such as intermittent fasting or cold showers.  The barbell strategy is the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom to engage in moderate  aerobic exercise on the treadmill every day, or to eat regular small meals throughout the day.   Periodic intense stressors build antifragile resilience — but chronic stress without rest and recovery only wears us down.  By alternating between “extremes”  of intensity and rest, feast and fast, luxury and poverty —  we become more resilient because we increase our range of responsiveness to environmental variability.In my 2011 post on Stress Oscillation, I developed a similar concept how to use intermittent exposure to stressors to enhance allostasis.  What I like especially about Taleb’s barbell strategy is its guidance on how to implement this in a way that maximizes upside and minimizes downside risk.  He insists that one “leg” of the barbell is quite safe, while the “stressor” leg adds to the upside.

Antifragile /  Getting Stronger.

Life is long gamma – The Hindu

That’s where the heading of this piece comes from — in trading jargon, when someone holds a ‘long gamma’ position, any movement in price is good news. In other words, long gamma means that which benefits from volatility or the non-linear. Excessive planning and smoothening are attempts to force something that’s predominantly non-linear into an easy linear graph, a simplification that distorts dangerously.

Taleb thus argues that depriving political and economic systems of natural volatility (non-linearity) — that is, making things artificially smooth — harms them more by leaving them unprepared when the biggie strikes. Take the turkey example. A turkey fattened for 1000 days imagines that life and the butcher love it. The turkey, its friends and family have absolutely no reason for 1000 days to doubt this. On the 1001 day, the Black Swan strikes. The most dangerous mistake the turkey made was to believe that the absence of evidence of harm meant the absence of harm.

via Life is long gamma – The Hindu.