Boktips: “Antifragile - things that gain from disorder”

Jag tycker mycket om att utbyta tankar och erfarenheter med andra, både i tal och i skrift. Något som säkert märks med tanke på det jag skapat genom åren i form av events, föreläsningar, workshops, kurser, podcast, intervjuer och videoprojekt. Så gillar jag ju att läsa också – och i vanlig ordning vill jag dela med mig av det som berör mig.

Under sommaren tänkte jag därför dela några favoritböcker med utdrag, citat och mina anteckningar från läsningen. Böckerna handlar oftast om vad det innebär att vara människa och hur vi lever i relation till vår omgivning. Sååå…. Vill ni följa med på en boktipsrunda?
Se det antingen som en inspiration till att själv läsa böckerna, till att få en snabbresumé om dess djupare innehåll eller mer än gärna – dela dina tankar om boken och det jag delat av den!

Här kommer lite favoriter från boken vars titel ständigt ger mig gåshud (#älskakaos):

“Antifragile - things than gain from disorder”

av Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Här är några löst utvalda delar, lite av vad jag tar med mig från boken – ibland citerat, ibland direkta utdrag och ibland en sammanfattning av mig. Siffran innan, visar vilken sida i boken som texten är hämtad/sammanfattad ifrån.

6
The chief ethical rule: “Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the fragility of others”

You get pusedo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

51
My son, I am very disappointed in you. I never hear anything wrong said about you. You have proven yourself incapable of generating envy”.

53
People tend to lend the most to those who need them the least.

62
”Tourismification” = modern life that treats humans as washing machines, with simplified mechanical responses - and a detailed user’s manual.

65
Business example. Restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is antifragile for that very reason.

121
It’s much easier to sell “look what I did for you” than “look what I avoided for you”… ex hjältar blir inre ihågkomna för vad de inte gjorde och läkare blir inte belönade för vad de inte gjorde eller skrev ut.

170
Steve Jobs sa något i stil med: Never ask people what they want, because people don’t know what they want until you provide them with it.

173
Those who can - do, and others - philosophize.

174
Wealth = being independent and have the ability to only occupy your mind with matters that interest you. But it’s side effects such as black-tie charity events, marble-rich house renovation, the social associations like people with big houses tend to end up socializing with other people with big houses.

176
If someone convinces himself that the grapes he cannot reach are sour…. You need to know if you genuinely not like it, or because you are rationalizing your inability to be succesful.

190
Det kan försvåra att söka det komplicerade svaret/lösningen. Det enkla tittar på och skrattar åt oss.

196
De som lär fåglar flyga och tar åt sig äran… If the student is smart, the teacher takes the credit. Sad fact that history belongs to those who can write about it.

201
You take the upside of your story and hide the downside, so only the sensational seems to count.

204
Wealth and Economi growth leads to Education. Not the other way around. Read that again.

212
You don’t go to school to learn optionality, but the reverse: to become blind to it.

215
…my take is that evolution is not a competition between ideas, but between humans and systems based on such ideas. An idea does not survive because it is better than the competition, but rather because the person who holds it has survived.
Accordingly, wisdom you learn from your grandmother should be vastly superior to what you get from a class in business school (and of course considerable cheaper).
My sadness is that we have been moving farther and farther away from grandmothers.

215
Expert problems - in which the expert knows a lot, but less than he thinks he does.

234
Cooperations loves strategic plan. yet there is no evidence that strategic planning works. You cannot see where the world is going, all you can do is create an environmet that facilitates these collaborations and lay foundation for prosperity.

242
Only autodidacts are free.

The most hinderance to the development of children: the soccer mom.
They eliminate the trial and error, move them away from the ecological and transform them in to nerds working on preexisting maps of reality.

243
”We do not study for life, but only for the lecture room” - Seneca

248
…what I was given to study in school I have forgotten; what I decided to read on my own, I still remember.

305
Via negativa… is part of classical wisdom.
Steve Jobs: People think focus means saying yes to the thing you focus on. But that’s not what it means. Innovation is saying no to 1000 things.

314
To understand the future you just need the following:
- some respect from the past
- some curiosity about the historical record
- a hunger for wisdom of elders
In other words, you will be forced to give weight to things that have been around, things that have survived.

321
We are led to believe that all technologies offering obvious benefits will survive.
We rely more on water than on cell phones, but because water does not change and cell phones do, we are prone to thinking that cell phones play a larger role than they do.

Most innovations are failures.

335
If something has been around a long time, you can expect it to stick around much longer and outline those who call for its demise.

340
We should not take risk with near-healthy people, but we should take a lot, a lot more risks with those deemed in danger.

342
Pharmaceutical companies are under financial press, to find diseases… they are looking for diseases among healthier and healthier people. If the patient is near healthy, than Mother Nature should be the doctor.

349
What Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise (guilty until proven innocent).

370
Sadly, as I write these lines, the economic system is loading future generations with public governmental debt…

371
I am a part of that larger population called humans. I am here to die a heroic death for the sake of the collective, to produce offspring (and prepare them for life and provide for them) or eventually books… my infommation that is, my genes… Then say goodbye and make room for others.

375
In older societies, those that has survived, the main difference between us and them is that those in power was taking risks for others.
The word ’sacrifice’ is related to ‘sacred’. Knights, generals, commanders, saints… You need to have your ‘skin in the game’ or the ‘soul in the game’.
Three levels:
- No skin in the game
- Skin in the game
- Skin in the game for the sake of others = soul in the game

379-380
A half-man is not someone who does not have an opinion, just someone who does not take risks for it. Dignity is worth nothing unless you earn it. Unless you are willing to pay a price for it.
If you take risks and face your faith with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don’t take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing.

386
I want predictors to have visable scars on their body from prediction errors, not distribute these errors to society.

408
På tal om att ‘vi visst har slavar idag’; Tie-wearers
-” Some of these tie-wearers are very rich, even richer than you!”
-”You sucker, don’t be fooled by money. These are just numbers. Being self-owned is a state of mind.

You need to make more to stay in the same place. You cannot possible trust someone on a tread mill. Wealth does not make people more independent.
”He is free who owns his own opinion. Be the owner of your opinion”.
A free person = someone who cannot be squeezed into doing something he would otherwise never do. Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinions.

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Det var några av mina anteckningar efter att ha läst boken.
Hoppas de gav dig någon tanke att ta vidare, en nyfikenhet att utforska mer!

Om jag ska koppla det här innehållet till något av det jag själv arbetar med så ligger det närmast:
Att se samhället mer objektivt, vilket man kan göra genom ökad naturnärvaro:
- Tiveden Nature Retreat
- Pathway to purpose  

Jag har en önskan om att fler ska minnas och återupptäcka hur det är att inte bara leva i och av naturen, utan att faktiskt leva MED den. Och att se att det samhälle vi skapat för att trygga oss i många fall istället försvårar vår överlevnad, och begränsar från frihet och möjlighet att se och uppleva världen så som den är.

Vad väcks hos dig?