How to thrive in chaos
Rating: 4/5
Anti-fragile loves uncertainty and randomness
Anything that has more upside than downside from randomness is anti-fragile
Anti-fragility loves volatility, randomness and time
Black swans dominate society and history
If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud
Things can be classified into 3 things: fragile, robust and anti-fragile
Fiscal deficits are a prime source of fragility in social and economic systems
Abundance is harder for humans to handle than scarcity
Post-traumatic growth: after trauma, people improve
Nature like to over-insure itself
Randomness and unpredictability is necessary for a true life
Individual parts of a system need to be fragile so the whole system can be anti-fragile - let zombie companies die
He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has sinned once. Someone who has made plenty of errors, though never the same more than once, is more reliable than someone who has never made any
Entrepreneurs and risk takers are the source of anti-fragility in the economy
Variability and randomness improves the system
Small in aggregate is more anti-fragile than the large
Fat tails are when unpredictable rare events cause a lot of damage
Delaying crises is not a good idea
Randomness is good for systems; keeps things on their toes
No stability without volatility
Sometimes the best decision is inaction
One should lead a life in which procrastination is good
There’s a difference b/w noise and signal. Noise is what you are supposed to ignore, signal is what you need to heed
Access to data increases intervention which is not necessary, unless emergency
Data is toxic in large quantities
The news makes us believe we live in a more fragile world than exists because of all the noise
You don’t know which cause produces which effect
Social scientists predicting years into the future is zero
Once an event occurs, understand the system that was constructed to allow the event to occur
Curiosity is anti-fragile and is magnified by attempts to satisfy it
Don’t pay attention to credentials. Stay alert to how others treat you
You can make big bucks in predicting that smart people will go bust
Wisdom in decision making is vastly more important than knowledge
An intelligent life is emotionally positioning to eliminate the sting of harm which is done by mentally writing off belongings so losing doesn’t hurt
Wealth is the slave of a wise man and master of the fool
If you have less to lose than to gain, more upside than downside, then you like volatility and are anti-fragile
Barbell strategy: aggressiveness plus paranoia
Do crazy things and stay rational in longer decisions
Your work is anti-fragile if most people dislike it but you have a small group of decent fans
Option = asymmetry + rationality
Humans lack imagination so we need randomness to feed us discoveries
Greed has existed throughout millenia but you can create greed-proof systems
Wealth and economic growth = education for countries, not the other way around
Good speculative bets come to you, you don’t get them watching the news
‘In theory, there is no difference b/w theory and practice. In practice, there is.’ - Yogi Berra
Expert problems (when experts know a lot less than he thinks) bring fragilities. Don’t blindly follow the experts
Practitioners don’t write, they do. Birds fly and those who lecture them are the ones who tell their story
Look for optionality w/ asymmetric payoff, invest in people and have a barbell strategy
Randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery and near-death episodes all make life worth living
Trial and error is freedom
Much of what other people know isn’t worth knowing
Probability is not as significant as the payoff
For the fragile, shocks bring higher harm as their intensity increases
For the anti-fragile, shocks bring more benefit as their intensity increases
Size hurts you during times of stress: it’s not good to be large in difficult times
Increase in size maps to poor outcomes
Bottlenecks are the mother of all squeezes
The economy is becoming more ‘efficient’, but the errors are increasing in size
Things that like disturbance = anti-fragile, things neutral to them = robust, things that dislike them = fragile
More uncertainty = more role for optionality = more you will outperform
Sometimes the best action is no action. Less is more
There is a winner take all effect where 1% controls 99%
Obvious decisions require no more than a single reason. If you have multiple choices, don’t decide
Understand that the future will still be similar to the past
The past is a better predictor of the future than the present
The longer a technology exists, the longer it can be expected to live
The future is in the past
Study the old books, not the new ones
Humans should not be given explosive toys (bombs, financial derivatives or the tools to create life)
Theories come and go, experience stays. Explanations change bu experience remains constant
The good is mostly in the absence of the bad
We are anti-fragile in randomness to food delivery and consumption
Starving your body periodically is good for you
Cowardice enhanced by technology is all connected
Dignity is worth nothing unless you earn it and are willing to pay a price for it
Predicting without skin in the game is dangerous
You want predictors to have visible scars on their bodies from prediction errors, not distribute these errors to society
Don’t ask anyone for an opinion. Just ask them about their portfolios
Opinions and predictions don’t count, serving is what matters
Have your soul in the game
Treadmill effect: you need to make more and more to stay in the same place
He is free who owns his own opinions
Everything gains or loses from volatility. Fragility is what loses from volatility and uncertainty
***
Buy the book here
Free E-book download here
other links
contact
© Anish Kaushal 2025. All rights reserved.
