name: antifragile
description: Apply Nassim Taleb's Antifragile principles for building systems that gain from disorder. Use when designing products, organizations, portfolios, or strategies that need to thrive under uncertainty, volatility, and stress. Also use when evaluating fragility of existing systems or deciding between options with different risk profiles.
tags: [decide, risk]

Antifragile Thinking

Build things that get stronger from stress, disorder, and volatility.

The Triad

Everything falls into one of three categories:

Key insight: Fragility and antifragility are measurable by response to volatility, not by past performance.

Question to ask: "Does this benefit from randomness and stress, or is it harmed by it?"

Optionality

Options are antifragile—limited downside, unlimited upside.

Characteristics of good optionality:
- Asymmetric payoff (lose small, win big)
- No obligation to exercise
- Benefits from volatility

Examples:
- Trying many small experiments vs one big bet
- Renting vs buying (in uncertain markets)
- Learning broad skills vs narrow specialization early
- Keeping cash reserves for opportunities

Rule: Prefer options over fixed commitments when uncertainty is high.

The Barbell Strategy

Avoid the middle. Combine extreme safety with extreme risk.

DON'T: ████████████████████ (medium risk everything)

DO:    ██████████      ████ (90% very safe + 10% very risky)
       └─ safe ─┘      └ speculative

Applications:
- Portfolio: 90% in safest assets, 10% in high-risk/high-reward
- Career: Stable income + side experiments
- Product: Rock-solid core + experimental features
- Time: Deep focus blocks + serendipity/exploration blocks

Why it works: You survive the downside (safe portion) while capturing upside (risky portion). The middle gets crushed by Black Swans.

Via Negativa

Subtraction beats addition. Removing bad things is more robust than adding good things.

Principle: We know what's wrong with more certainty than what's right.

Applications:
- Health: Avoid harmful things > add supplements
- Products: Remove friction > add features
- Decisions: Eliminate bad options > optimize among remaining
- Writing: Cut words > add words
- Habits: Stop bad habits > start good habits

Heuristic: If unsure whether to add something, don't. If unsure whether to remove something harmful, do.

Small Stressors Are Good

Systems need stress to stay strong. Removing all volatility causes fragility.

Examples:
- Muscles atrophy without exercise
- Immune systems weaken without exposure
- Teams rot without challenges
- Economies stagnate without competition

Implication: Don't over-protect. Introduce controlled stressors:
- Regular testing/chaos engineering
- Tight deadlines occasionally
- Competitive pressure
- Difficult customers

Caveat: Stressors must be survivable. Large, rare stressors kill; small, frequent stressors strengthen.

Skin in the Game (Preview)

Antifragility requires that those who make decisions bear consequences.

• Systems where decision-makers don't bear downside become fragile
• Consultants without skin in the game give fragile advice
• Builders with skin in the game build antifragile things

(See: skin-in-the-game skill for full treatment)

Detecting Fragility

Fragile systems have:
- Optimization for efficiency over resilience
- Debt / leverage / tight coupling
- Single points of failure
- Dependence on predictions being correct
- Hidden risks that compound

Antifragile systems have:
- Redundancy and slack
- Decentralization
- Small, independent units
- Benefits from volatility
- Transparent, bounded risks

Test: Increase volatility mentally. Does the system improve or degrade?

Time and Lindy

Lindy Effect: For non-perishable things, life expectancy increases with age.

• A book in print for 100 years will likely last another 100
• A technology used for 50 years will likely be used for 50 more
• A new framework might not last 5 years

Implication: Prefer time-tested over novel, unless novel has clear asymmetric upside.

For building: Use old, proven technologies for foundations. Experiment on the edges.

Application Checklist

When designing or evaluating:

1. [ ] Is this fragile, robust, or antifragile?
2. [ ] Where's the optionality? What's the asymmetry?
3. [ ] Am I in the middle of the barbell? Should I move to extremes?
4. [ ] What can I remove rather than add?
5. [ ] Are there enough small stressors to maintain strength?
6. [ ] Who has skin in the game? Who doesn't?
7. [ ] Is this Lindy? Time-tested or novel?
8. [ ] What happens if volatility increases 10x?

Anti-Patterns

• "Optimize for efficiency" → Often creates fragility
• "Reduce all variance" → Removes beneficial stressors
• "Predict and plan precisely" → Fragile to prediction errors
• "Scale fast" → Often increases fragility
• "One big bet" → No optionality, fragile
• "Best practices from experts" → Often no skin in the game