> [!abstract] > Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. The concept was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, Antifragile ([[Taleb, 2012]]), and in technical papers. As Taleb explains in his book, antifragility is fundamentally different from the concepts of resiliency (i.e. the ability to recover from failure) and robustness (that is, the ability to resist failure). (Wikipedia, 2024). ### Relation to randomness --- Some systems benefit from randomness over time, others don't. Among the latter is a vase: the more time passes, the more likely it is that a random event (an earthquake, moving houses, a soccer ball, a clumsy cat) will destroy the vase. That makes the vase threatened by randomness and time, and therefore, fragile. An object that merely stays mostly impervious to randomness and time, such as a mountain (ignoring erosion over geological time scales), is not antifragile; it is merely not fragile, or robust. An object is antifragile if randomness and time can only enhance it; for example, a commodity with very little price downside potential, but asymmetrically large price upside potential due to unpredictable events. Which leads to three categories: fragile <- not fragile (or robust) -> antifragile. >[!related] >- **North** (upstream):— >- **West** (similar): — >- **East** (different): — >- **South** (downstream): [[Hygiene hypothesis]]