Passage to Extremistan: Lessons from Robust and Antifragile Systems

Pre-Recorded Session


Live Q&A

Friday, June 4th, 11:30 am – 12:00 pm


Description

Based on the Incerto series of books by Lebanese-American author Nassim Taleb this session discusses the properties of a normal distribution and how it is a useful tool for predicting and planning in the world of “Mediocristan” the world of coin flips and human height. However, it is easy to confuse that world with the fat-tailed distributions of “Extremistan” the world of wealth and app sales which make things fragile to black swan events. Next, we’ll introduce a spectrum; on one end is fragility; things that are weak to volatility (teacups, highly specialized tools). In the middle is robustness; things indifferent to volatility (a stone, T-bills). On the other end would be antifragility; things that gain from disorder (muscles, technological innovations). We’ll end with a discussion of some tools to help identify and leverage antifragile systems.


Presenter Information