Antifragile

"It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it mean that they should not be the source of any idea. Students pay to write essays on topics for which they have to derive knowledge from a library as a self-enhancement exercise; a professional who is compensated to write and is taken seriously by others should use a more potent filter. Only distilled ideas, ones that sit in us for a long time, are acceptable - and those that come from reality." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Antifragile

As I read this it occurred to me that it equally could be applied to AI which, if you think about it, represent an LLM of all the books ever written. However, if you don't understand how a subject truly works just gives you at best a surface knowledge which in Taleb's words would probably make you fragile.

Farnam Street Knowledge

- Elements of Effective Thinking

- 10 Principles to Live an Antifragile Life

- Preserving Optionality: Preparing for the Unknown

Some Farnam Street Knowledge

- In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed.

- Externalities: Why We Can Never Do "One Thing"

- Elmore Leonard: 10 Rules of Writing

- First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge

- 10 Principles to Live an Antifragile Life

- Entropy: The Hidden Force that Complicates Life

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- When Earth Day predictions go predictably wrong. Even Reason is saying it's time to stop freaking out about the world's imminent demise.

- A reminder from a year ago that the stamina of President Trump is pretty impressive

- 10 Principles to living an "Antifragile" life

- I truly want one of these

- Game of Thrones: Battle of Winterfell. Two military experts explain Jon and Dany's sloppy plan. (Spoilers)

- Wired also has a tactical analysis of the Battle of Winterfell (Spoilers)

- Russ Roberts (tongue in cheek) asks if Bill Belichick is just lucky. Yes this is from 2-years ago but I'm just finding it now.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Canada needs to fight back against unfair Chinese trade practices. China knows it can bully Canada but if Trudeau is ousted as PM due to the Quebec scandal and is replaced by a Conservative then China will either feel the pain economically of new Canadian tariffs or it will resolve it's trade war with the US hoping Canada will fall in line.

- I might be in the minority but this looks pretty cool to me. Granted I have a thing for blimps and I do not think this would work in congested city environments.

- Heh Heh

- How the brain fights off fears that return to haunt us

- Nassim Taleb: a definition of Antifragile and its implications.

- 43-years ago this week.

- The 25 most popular Ted Talks. I think I've only seen 3.