Book 236 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 3/5)

Reflection Title: Curiosity is Antifragile!

Book – Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Part 3 of 5)

Book Description:

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem, and in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what Taleb calls the "antifragile" is actually beyond the robust, because it benefits from shocks, uncertainty, and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. The antifragile needs disorder in order to survive and flourish.

Reflection:

The definition of fragility is being easily broken, or damaged.

To visualize fragility, I like to think of a beautiful porcelain vase sitting on a tiny pedestal in the middle of a room of toddlers at a day care center. It may look beautiful and in one piece now, but we all know that it is just a matter of time before one of those mischievous toddlers figures out a way to do what they do best and destroy things. For fun, we task the employees at the daycare center to “protect” the vase to see how long they can keep it from shattering. The first idea the employees had was to list a bunch of rules and try to explain to the toddlers why the vase is off limits and do their best to police the rules when they see toddlers breaking them. The employees quickly recognized this won’t work long term and then decided to put some barrier up around the vase and pedestal to limit physical access. During a game of “football”, they realize that the vase is still highly vulnerable from all the projectiles being thrown around the room, so they decide to step up the protection. They then decide to go super max security and encase the vase and pedestal into a bullet proof glass container sealed on all sides.

They all think, “That will do it…great work team”!

The employees all look at each other, share a smile, and sit back to enjoy a tasty lemonade together to celebrate the win. The toddlers are no match for the bullet proof glass container, and everything looks like it is going well. As they are sipping their lemonade in the employee lounge while celebrating their win, an earthquake rocks the town and they hear a crash in the toddler room. They all run in to see the vase in a million pieces in their glass chamber.

Damnit!

The point is, that vase is fragile. There are a million ways in which a random set of circumstances can occur that result in that vase lying on the floor in pieces. There is practically zero upside in investing your time, money and energy into protecting that vase. It is vulnerable, it will always be vulnerable, and there is nothing we can do to stop it from the inevitable occurring.

Such is life! Almost everything we see exist in this world is fragile, ourselves included. We’re just one black swan away from finding out.

You know what isn’t fragile…curiosity! Curiosity should be the definition of antifragility.

While protecting the vase, yourself, your job, your house, or even something as large as the worldwide economy has almost zero upside in investing your time, money, or energy into due to its inherent fragility; a question, on the other hand, is practically all upside.

Questions never die once they are born into this world. Questions can live on in perpetuity. Questions turn into more questions, which turn into ideas, which eventually turn into things. Those things will eventually become fragile, vulnerable, and break. The beauty of a question is that it can live forever even if what they create can’t. You can always start again and take a different path, that is why curiosity and questions are the definition of antifragility.

Questions provide options, and antifragility is all about giving yourself as many options as you can to survive and thrive. Curiosity is the ticket to board the antifragility train.

If you want to be antifragile, never stop questioning the world around you and it will take you to places you literally can’t even imagine.

Question: What questions do you need to bring out into this world and see where they take you?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb