Book Title: "Antifragile" Publisher: CITIC Publishing House Have we discovered that the world is becoming more and more fragile.

A heavy rain in Beijing may paralyze traffic in the entire city.

In 2018, Hurricane Michael made landfall in Florida, causing power outages in several surrounding states.

It is as if the entire society has become a domino, and the collapse of any point will cause the collapse of the entire system.

At the same time, some things that are particularly stable and long-lasting in our eyes also disappear overnight.

Kodak was once synonymous with imaging, with its market value reaching a peak of $31 billion.

At its most glorious, there was only one kind of film in China, and that was Kodak.

But such a giant filed for bankruptcy in 2012, with less than US$1 billion at the time of liquidation.

Tens of billions of dollars in stocks were wiped out.

The same fate was shared by mobile phone giant Nokia, which dominated the mobile phone market for 14 years and finally fell on the eve of the smartphone era.

They are like the giant Goliath in the Bible, infinitely powerful and invincible.

In the end, he was hit in the head with a sling by the shepherd boy David and died.

This book will tell us how our world has become fragile, and how we can improve our antifragility capabilities to benefit from an uncertain future.

The author of this book is Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

He was originally an investor in a venture fund. During his investment career, he had twice successfully shorted the stock market and made a fortune.

You will be financially free before you turn 30.

Later, he wrote his successful experience and understanding of the world into a book called "Black Swan".

What is a black swan event?

It refers to something extremely rare and unexpected.

The reason why it is called black swan is because of such an allusion.

Before the 17th century, people thought swans were white, but then the discovery of black swans in Australia completely overturned people's belief that swans were black.

Therefore, this type of event with a small probability but far-reaching impact is called a black swan event.

In that book, he believed that the world is unpredictable and full of the outbreak of various black swan events.

For example, in the book, he successfully warned of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Although Wall Street managers turned a deaf ear to his advice, when the crisis broke out, Taleb used his foresight to make a fortune again.

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Not only that, "Black Swan" also relied on this prediction to sell well and became a phenomenal best-seller.

The current book "Antifragility" is based on the book "Black Swan" and goes one step further to show us how to benefit from a random and uncertain world.

Below we will talk about it in three key points.

First, we will understand what antifragile is and what are its characteristics.

After that, we’ll move on to understand why we should improve our antifragile capabilities.

How antifragility can help us improve our ability to survive in the future.

Finally, we’ll know how to make ourselves more antifragile so we can benefit in an uncertain future.

Before we answer this question, let’s think about it, what is the antonym of fragile?

Many people think it is strong and tenacious.

It's easy to understand. Fragility means breakability, just like a glass falling into pieces on a concrete floor.

And being strong means being solid, like an iron box, falling to the ground unharmed.

However, have we discovered a problem, that is, the glass falls into pieces when it is dropped on the ground, which is a loss.

Although the iron box fell to the ground and was safe, nothing changed.

One loss and the other no change, how can the two be opposite to each other? Therefore, strength or tenacity is just an intermediate state, vulnerability is a loss state, and its antonym should be a profit state.

Therefore, the opposite of vulnerability is never strength, or resilience.

The author Taleb invented a word called "antifragility", which means the opposite of fragility.

It refers to a state where one is not only strong under pressure, but also able to benefit from pressure.

A typical antifragile thing is tennis.

When it fell to the ground, it neither broke nor fell to the ground without moving.

After it fell to the ground, it received a reaction force from the ground and continued to bounce up.

This is the state of gaining from pressure.

Therefore, the author discusses with us in this book how to benefit from future risks.

Those who can do this are antifragile.

The author Taleb himself is an antifragile person, and he benefits from risks.

He had offended many Wall Street financial executives by writing the book "Black Swan".

He felt that these so-called elites on Wall Street were a group of extremely shameless people.

Because they always reap the rewards of risk, but leave the losses to others.

For example, during the subprime mortgage crisis, they designed a set of real estate loan financing projects.

Package good projects and bad projects together and sell them to others.