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Alex Fox's avatar

Patrick, have you read "Antifragile" by Nassim Taleb? Most well known for his book "Black Swan," he extensively discusses the idea of resilience and asymmetrical effects in "Antifragile." As the title suggests, the topic is about systems (organic and organizational) that get stronger when they're stressed, rather than weaker.

This occurred to me because the opening of this post reminded me of the Pareto principle (as generally used, it would suggest that 20% of the population requires 80% of the resources), but Taleb delves much deeper into the topic, exploring how phase transitions occur (e.g., a small increase in the number of cars on the road suddenly extends commute times by a large amount), and also how considering the relative upside vs. downside of actions can aid decision-making. In other words, if there's a big potential upside and a small potential downside to a course of action, it's advisable; the opposite is equally true.

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