Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A follow-up to The Black Swan, this book is very interesting. It is a work that is thought-provoking and controversial. The author is bombastic, caustic, critical and rude. But if you can get past the frequent eruptions, which many readers cannot, there is an insight or pregnant thought on every page.

The topic is risk and how future events can't be predicted but if something is "fragile" you can "predict" it will probably fail. Systems or organizations that are robust or "antifragile" can avoid failure. Systems or organizations that are made up of small parts that can fail without killing the whole thing are organisms and are antifragile. Nature is organic and antifragile. The prototype of fragility is banks that are too big to fail. They are propped up and this makes things worse and more fragile.

Ethics stem from having "skin in the game" i.e. what you recommend, if it fails, you lose as well, unlike banking executives. The captain who goes down with the ship.

Though you cannot predict Black Swans you can, use a "via negativa" removing or avoiding fragility.

He also discusses how organic systems benefit from hormesis which is stress that a part of the organism suffers which makes the whole stronger.

I recommend this book and plan to reread it and discuss it with other people.