{"id":3133,"date":"2011-04-27T14:45:31","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T21:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/88ff69bb145085d5"},"modified":"2011-04-27T14:45:31","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T21:45:31","slug":"mercenary-trader-%c2%bb-cockroaches-extinction-events-and-anti-fragility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/mercenary-trader-%c2%bb-cockroaches-extinction-events-and-anti-fragility\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercenary Trader \u00bb Cockroaches, Extinction Events and Anti-Fragility"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Shared by  JohnH<br \/>\n<br \/>\nPost also quotes Rick Bookstaber who uses a biological metaphor &#8211; survival over time &#8211; in weighing investment strategies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This train of thought was jogged by a Wharton discussion with Nassim Taleb on fragility and over-optimization (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/blogs\/paul-kedrosky\/2011\/04\/taleb-on-fragility.html\">available via Paul Kedrosky here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>In arguing why an oil shock could actually be a good thing \u2014 a sort of wake-up call to get us off our butts \u2014 Taleb brings up the concept of \u201canti-fragility,\u201d also the subject of his \u201cBlack Swan\u201d follow-up:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mercenarytrader.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/taleb.jpg\" alt=\"\" height=\"179\" width=\"173\">There is robustness, fragility, and anti-fragility. [Anti-fragility] is not robustness, it is beyond\u2026 you give someone a little poison and they get stronger.<\/p>\n<p>Economic life gets stronger not with bailouts, but with bankruptcies. Evolution works not with bailouts \u2014 there are no bailouts in nature \u2014 but with competition and natural selection.<\/p>\n<p>So you need to have some stressors. And we have not been stressed enough (in regard to oil prices)\u2026 this is the fragility of depending on one source, one product.<\/p>\n<p>It is optimal to use oil, but more dangerous\u2026 almost 99 cases out of 100, optimization makes you vulnerable and fragile.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shared by  JohnH <\/p>\n<p>Post also quotes Rick Bookstaber who uses a biological metaphor &#8211; survival over time &#8211; in weighing investment strategies.<br \/>\nThis train of thought was jogged by a Wharton discussion with Nassim Taleb on fragility and over-optimization (&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}