Bitesized Lessons in Antifragility #1: Importance of Decentralization
Hi all! This is a new online education series in antifragility, an important concept in living a more fulfilling life, why Bitcoin works, generating income without risk of ruin, why evolution works, how to improve the efficiency and rigor of scientific research, and much much more. Think of antifragility as the mathematical backbone of stoic philosophy.
Nassim Taleb's works are required readings: http://fooledbyrandomness.com/
Eventually, we might get to some lessons in math, statistics, history, writings of Karl Popper and Seneca, meditation, zen riddles, cold showers, powerlifting, GMOs, options trading, scientific method, religion vs. science, what is a pseudo-intellectual, evolution, education reform, and more.
Comment below which topic you would like to hear about next!
Lesson #1: Importance of Decentralization
Rather than starting with some of the more fundamental concepts, I want to start with demonstrating the power of decentralization to show why decentralized, peer to peer platforms like Bitcoin work, and why Steemit is superior to Reddit.
A key consideration of antifragility is loss vs. ruin. You want to make small bets so that you don't lose everything you own. You want to AVOID the possibility of losing everything at once. That can mean death by Russian Roulettes or a bankruptcy that brings down the whole world's financial system. Failure to understand black swans and the value of decentralized monetary policy by so-called experts led to the 2008 Great Recession. This is resilience. As @xtester clarified, antifragility goes beyond resilience to gain from disorder. An example would be Taleb and a few others profiting from the Great Recession.
Top down methods have fat tail risk distributions
Bottom up methods have thin tail risk distributions
Bitcoin and decentralization are bottom up solutions to problems, so they have thin tail risk distributions. This means that rare events do not have catastrophic, disproportionally big effects. (Technically this isn't perfectly true, as attacks on the biggest exchanges can have catastrophic impacts, and there is a possibility of 51% mining attacks, but it is still the first good solution towards the decentralization of monetary policy.)
Note that making the lessons bitesized is also an effort in decentralizing the knowledge. Less info per post = better retention of the main point.
That's all for this lesson. For more, follow me @limitless
Thanks for reading!
Interesting subject.
"A key consideration of antifragility is loss vs. ruin. You want to make small bets so that you don't lose everything you own. You want to AVOID the possibility of losing everything at once. " - What you are describing here seems to be resilience. In order to make it antifragile, as Taleb did, you have to not merely resist(which is indeed critical), but gain from disorder.
A good example would be Taleb's bet from 2007-2008 that the economy would fall and a serious economic crisis would emerge. As the downturn begun, he not only escaped the situation of ruin, but made a fortune when the economy was at its worst and most people suffered their biggest losses, because his position was designed to gain the most when chaos and disorder kicked in.
Anyway, keep up the posts, @xtester.
Thanks, great example.
And yes, you're right. That's not the definition of antifragility. I just wanted to point out the importance of resilience for now. Next post, I will probably give a proper introduction to antifragility and black swan with actual quotes from the books.
If this takes off, would you be willing to guest post in this series?
Everything I read from you so far is very interesting and valuable for me ! Had to be said 🌞 Keep on doing IT
Thanks!
I have that book! I remember it being quite good, and now I want to read it again.
I like your list of upcoming topics, and I look forward to all of them. I guess one of the following would be my choice for the topic of your next article:
writings of Karl Popper and Seneca, GMOs, options trading, scientific method, religion vs. science, what is a pseudo-intellectual
Thanks for writing!
Thanks for reading! I think I will give a basic overview next then maybe scientific method and go from there.
My request is that you do not put stop posting this series just because this first article did poorly. I imagine, that with time this article will do very well. Thank you.
Thanks! I needed to hear this. Better to be a 10 in the eyes of 10 people than a 7 in the eyes of 1000. Hopefully I will see an exponential growth of cult followers.
http://48laws-of-power.blogspot.ca/2011/05/law-27-play-on-peoples-need-to-believe.html
Table of contents
Lesson #1: Importance of Decentralizaton: https://steemit.com/antifragile/@limitless/bitesized-lessons-in-antifragility-1-importance-of-decentralization
Lesson #2: What is a Black Swan?: https://steemit.com/antifragile/@limitless/bitesized-lessons-in-antifragility-2-what-is-a-black-swan
Lesson #3: What is Antifragility?: https://steemit.com/antifragile/@limitless/bitesized-lessons-in-antifragility-3-what-is-antifragility-math-proves-that-you-should-lift-heavy-weights-my-transformation
I'd like to hear you talk about education reform and the potential of "unschooling"
I will definitely be writing about that some time.