How to fall in love with the wind?

The wind will extinguish the candle, but it can make the fire burn brighter and stronger.

The same goes for randomness, uncertainty, and chaos: you exploit them, not avoid them. You want to be a fire, longing to be blown by the wind.

The author summarizes a clear attitude towards randomness and uncertainty, and we do not just want to survive uncertainty, or simply defeat uncertainty.

In addition to surviving uncertainty, we want to have the last word. Our mission is to tame, dominate, and even conquer the invisible, the opaque, and the inexplicable.

Antifragility

The author’s definition of antifragility: Some things can benefit from shocks when exposed to volatility, randomness, chaos and stress, risk and uncertainty When exposed to sex, they thrive and grow. But despite its ubiquity, we still don’t have a word to describe the opposite of vulnerability. So, let’s call it antifragile.

Lisa When I read the barbell strategy mentioned in the book, I was pleasantly surprised. I liked many of the ideas in the book. They were full of charm and made me read it without putting it down for 3 consecutive days. It made me I feel that this Spring Festival holiday is particularly valuable. I like Nietzsche's famous saying, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Just like human bones will become stronger when they bear appropriate pressure and tension, the wind will extinguish the candle, but it can make the fire burn stronger and stronger. For randomness, uncertainty and chaos, we must use them to bring favorable factors instead of avoiding them. You must become fire and long to be blown by the wind.

The following two points in this book touched me the most:

1 - Barbell strategy: Bet on both ends and abandon the mean

Barbell strategy refers to It is like a barbell, you have to bet on both ends, not in the middle; but it is not an equal amount of bets on both ends.

One end is extremely safe and conservative, and the other end is extremely risky and aggressive.

1) Take personal education and growth as an example:

The author just wants to pass the exam in school and spends his time reading books that interest him. He does not expect to learn anything from school. get anything. The author's father allowed him to study as he pleased in school, thereby broadening his knowledge and making him different from people with narrow knowledge backgrounds. As a result, he made money in his twenties, even though his country was in turmoil.

The author said: I have forgotten everything I was taught in school; but I still remember the things I decided to read very firmly. There is nothing more important than following your own hobbies and choosing to read.

The author is a barbell-style autodidact, because he only learns very little necessary knowledge in school and can pass the exam. Sometimes he will get high scores occasionally, or occasionally he will get low scores. He read voraciously, focusing initially on the humanities, later dabbling in mathematics and science, and later on history. This is knowledge outside the classroom and can be read deeply and widely to satisfy his curiosity, no matter what subject he chooses.

2) Take personal life as an example

Do some crazy things (occasionally smash furniture), just like the Greeks drinking; while staying "sane" in bigger decisions ".

Read useless entertainment magazines, as well as classics or complex works, but not mediocre books.

Communicate with college students, taxi drivers and gardeners, or the best scholars, but not with mediocre but ambitious scholars. If you don't like someone, either let them be or break them, don't just stop at verbal attacks.

The fitness training model mentioned: practice lifting as much as you can handle, and then doing nothing, is the same model that many people in the gym use to exercise at a lower intensity for a long time.

3) Take financial investment as an example

Returning to financial investment, the barbell strategy does not necessarily involve investing part in anti-inflation cash and part in speculative securities. Presented in form. Any strategy that eliminates the risk of destruction is a barbell strategy. Legendary investor Rai. Dalio gave an iron rule to those who enter speculative gambling: "Make sure that the probability of an unacceptable situation (i.e. destruction or disaster) happening is zero." For example, we can put 90% of our funds in defensive investments with lower risks. Among them, 10% can give it a go and attack.

4) Take career development as an example

The barbell-style businessman-scholar model is ideal; the barbell-style stable civil servant-author model is ideal;

< p> Careers can also be divided into stages: start with very safe jobs, then move to more speculative jobs.

The book writes: A friend of mine once found himself a very safe job as a book editor, and he was also considered a very good editor. Then, after 10 years on the job, he left to pursue a highly speculative and risky career.

This is also the real barbell model: if his speculation fails, or he cannot achieve the expected satisfaction, he can return to his old business.

This is what Seneca chose to do: he lived a very active and adventurous life at first, then retired philosophically to write and meditate, rather than engage in a hybrid career. "Intermediate" mode works. Many people who changed from "doers" to "thinkers" like Montaigne also adopted this staged barbell model: first immersed themselves in action, and then immersed themselves in thinking.

If I had to go to work, I think the most preferable (and less painful) option would be to work intensely for a very short period of time and then do nothing (assuming nothing, that is) Literally doing everything) until I fully recovered and looked forward to doing it all over again instead of doing the low-intensity, restless, sleep-deprived, tedious work that the Japanese do. Main courses and desserts still need to be separated.

In fact, George Simnon, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century, only had 60 days a year to write, and the remaining 300 days to "do nothing." However, he published more than 200 novels.

French literary writers and other European literary writers have a tradition of finding a sinecure job, such as a civil servant with the least professional pressure, which does not require much thinking but has a stable job. It's a low-stakes job that you don't think about again after you leave the office, so after get off work, these writers use their spare time to write whatever they want according to their own standards. American writers are different. They often work in the media or academia, which makes them subject to the system and destroys their writing inspiration. People engaged in academic research also live under constant anxiety and pressure, which indeed seriously interferes with their writing. their souls.

On the other hand, doing a side job and writing is a very effective model, second only to, or even more powerful than, enjoying financial independence.

For example, the great French poets Paul Claudel, Saint-Jones and the novelist Stendhal were all diplomats: many British writers were civil servants, Trollope was a postman, and Carson was a postman. Fka is employed by an insurance company. Interestingly enough, Spinoza was a lens maker and his philosophy was therefore completely immune to any form of academic thought.

The author writes: When I was a teenager, I thought the natural way to pursue a true career in literature or philosophy was to pursue a career in the lazy, cheerful way that so many of my family members did. Diplomat is a professional and undemanding profession. I became a trader, but I was also able to write in my spare time. Readers can see that I wrote completely according to my own wishes. From the time I leave the office at 3 or 4 in the afternoon until I go to work the next day, I leave the day's work behind and am completely free to do the work that I find most valuable and interesting.

5) In terms of personal risk

The book says: Let us choose some examples to get a glimpse of the leopard. In terms of personal risk, you can easily put yourself in a barbell structure by eliminating fatal risk in any area. I personally am very cautious about some risks and very aggressive about others. My rule is: no smoking, no eating sugar (especially fructose), no riding a motorcycle, no riding a bicycle outside the city - or more generally, no riding in areas without traffic, such as the Sahara Desert, Don't have connections to the Eastern European mafia, don't get on a plane that isn't a professional pilot (unless you have a co-pilot). But beyond that, I can take all forms of professional and personal risks, especially those that don't cause me any ultimate harm.

So, keep in mind that a stochastic barbell strategy enhances antifragility by mitigating vulnerability and eliminating the adverse risk of harm, that is, reducing the pain of adverse events while ensuring the potential for income.

As seen in many chapters of this book, many barbell strategies have the same asymmetry. They will bring us the same protection in the face of risk and help us take advantage of antifragility. They look very similar.

2 - Mistakes, thank you

The question of "mistakes" and why some people's mistakes benefit others.

We can describe the relationship between fragility, errors, and antifragility simply this way. When you're vulnerable, you tend to stay in a rut and minimize change - because change often does more harm than good. This is why fragile things require clear forecasting methods, and conversely, forecasting systems can only bring fragility. If you want to make a change and don't care about the multiple possibilities of future outcomes and assume that most outcomes will be in your favor, then you are antifragile.

In addition, if you can conduct trial and error rationally and treat errors as a source of information, then the random elements that appear in the trial and error process are not actually so random. If each trial and error allows you to learn what doesn't work, and gradually you get closer to a solution that works, then each effort becomes more valuable and more like an expense than an expense. mistake. Of course, you will continue to make discoveries along the way.

1) Learn from the mistakes of others

We often benefit from the mistakes of others - unfortunately, the beneficiaries are not those who made the mistakes. Under the right circumstances, we can think of stress as information. For something to be antifragile, the damage from a mistake should be less than the gain. Of course, we're talking about some, but not all, bugs; those that don't destroy the system can help prevent larger disasters. Engineer and engineering historian Henry Trosky makes an impeccable point. If the "Titanic" had not suffered the well-known fatal accident, we would have continued to build larger and larger ocean liners, and the next disaster would have been an even greater tragedy. So the passengers on board are actually making sacrifices for the greater good.

2) How can search and mistakes become investments?

There is an important value of trial and error that people don’t yet understand: it is not actually random!

Because of the existence of optionality, it requires a certain amount of rationality: it requires a certain amount of wisdom on your part to recognize favorable outcomes and to know what to give up. In order for the trial-and-error process to not be completely random, you need to be rational. If you're looking for a wallet in your living room that you don't know where to put, the rationale for using the trial-and-error approach is that you don't have to look for the same place twice. In this way, during the search process, every attempt and every failure can provide additional information. Each piece of information is more valuable than the previous one, because you become more and more aware of which methods are useless or where. It was impossible to find the wallet. In an environment where you know exactly what you're looking for, every attempt brings you closer to that thing. We can gradually find the right direction from failed attempts.

During the trial and error process, we will make small mistakes, but we can gain big benefits. We might as well call it "free exploration" tinkering)

As Steve Jobs famously said The views expressed in his speech are "Be thirsty for knowledge, be humble and foolish."

Remain rational despite the madness, and seize favorable opportunities when you see them. "Any trial and error can be considered an option. As long as you can identify the favorable outcome and take advantage of it.

Summarize some rules:

(1) Look for Optional; in fact, rank the businesses you want to engage in based on optionality;

(2) It is better to choose businesses with open-ended rather than closed-ended returns;

< p> (3) Never use business plans as investment objects, but use people as investment objects. Look for a person who can change 6 or 7 kinds of jobs, or even more kinds of jobs in his career - this is venture capitalist Mark , the method used by Anderson; using people as investment objects can help us become immune to written narratives such as business plans. This can ensure that you improve your resilience;

(4) Regardless. Whatever your business is, make sure you choose the barbell strategy

Wonderful points:

1/ Innovation is exactly what benefits from uncertainty; Will also wait for uncertainty and use it as raw material, just like our hunter ancestors

2/ Education, in the sense of shaping character and personality and acquiring real knowledge, loves disorder; Labeling education hates disorder.

3/Everything that is non-linear is either convex or concave, or both, depending on the intensity of the stressor. < /p>

4/Everything gains or loses from volatility. Fragility is the loss caused by volatility and uncertainty.

The glass on the table is very good. Afraid of volatility.

5/ All real ideas can be distilled into a core issue, while the vast majority in certain specific fields completely ignore this issue due to professional division of labor and superficiality. Religious laws can all be summed up in the refinement, application and interpretation of the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

Less is more

6/ Bergson’s razor: “A philosopher should be famous for one idea, not for many. ”

Therefore, let us remember this rule: if someone’s resume is very long, just ignore him.

The author said “At a meeting, a friend invited the author to meet with a A highly accomplished and popular person went to lunch. His resume showed that "he has almost done what others would have done in two or three lifetimes." The author chose to decline, preferring to sit at the same table with students and stage engineers.

When someone tells me that a person has written 300 academic papers and received 22 honorary doctorates, but does not have any commendable contributions or personal ideas, then I will think of this person. Avoid it.

7/ Don’t stand still even if you fail. If necessary, explore in other directions and follow the guidance of that broad sense of freedom and opportunism. Trial and error is a kind of freedom. Avoid the only recommended mode when you are bored, otherwise life will not be worth living.

8/Be prepared for the worst, the best will always come true

9/Let people experience some (but not too much) pressure to awaken their potential.

10/Seneca’s asymmetry:

To make the favorable factors outweigh the unfavorable factors, you only need to reduce the damage (emotional harm) of the extreme unfavorable factors, rather than improving the intermediate factors .

11/ Entrepreneurs are often doers, not thinkers. Doers value actions, not words. Therefore, it would be unfair, even wrong, and downright insulting to judge them by their talk. The same is true for skilled workers. We should measure their craftsmanship by their products, not their ability to express themselves--in fact, they are easy Create erroneous opinions.

12/ There are only a few opportunities in a person's life that you absolutely cannot miss.

A once-in-a-lifetime speculative opportunity is coming to you. Don’t think that you can find the opportunity by paying attention to the news.

13/ Filling the brain with too many complex techniques and methods often makes people ignore basic things. Less is more; on the one hand, the more you study, the easier it is to overlook basic but fundamental things; on the other hand, action can strip things away until you are left with the simplest possible model.

14/ The people who bring us the greatest benefit are not those who have tried to help us (such as providing "advice"), but those who have tried to harm us but ultimately failed.

15/ The respect a person receives is directly proportional to the risks he takes for his ideas (in other words, how many adverse consequences he faces).

16/ Identify fragility and bet on the collapse of fragile things

If something is fragile, the risk of it breaking will undermine anything you do to improve it It or efforts to improve its efficiency become irrelevant unless you first reduce the risk of it breaking.

17/You can’t do anything hastily and safely. Almost nothing can be done.

18/A person who can use financial independence wisely can make you more resilient. It will provide you with more choices and allow you to make the right choices. Freedom is the ultimate choice. .

19/Social growth may not come from an increase in the average level, as in the Asian model, but from an increase in the number of people in the "tail", that is, a small or very small number of risk-takers who are crazy They insist on their own opinions and possess the rare ability called imagination and the rare quality called courage. At the same time, they are also practical people.

20/Unless you face options and choices, you will never understand yourself and what you really like

21/Education can bring benefits to our careers come useful diplomas, but the effect will be diluted at the national level. Education can stabilize family income across generations. If a businessman makes money, his children can go to the University of Paris and become doctors and judges. Families maintain wealth because diplomas help family members stay in the middle class long after their ancestors' wealth is exhausted.

22/If I could predict the trajectory of my future every day, then I would feel like a part of my body is dead.

Furthermore, randomness is an integral part of real life. In the habitat of our ancestors, humans will be stimulated by the natural environment. The most primitive feelings such as fear, hunger, and desire will inspire us to explore and adapt to the surrounding environment.

23/ You can’t predict the future accurately, but you can predict that those who rely on predictions tend to take more risks, encounter some troubles, and may even fail. Why? Because forecasters are vulnerable to forecast errors. Overconfident pilots ultimately lead to crashes and fatalities, while data predictions lead people to take more risks.

24/ He identifies fragility, bets on the collapse of fragile things, and then, when the things he bet on collapses as expected, makes a fortune,

25/ in life Most of the conflicts occur when a person (such as a decision-maker) tries to stimulate rationality by weakening and being vulnerable.

26/ One attribute of the option is that it does not care about the average outcome, but only cares about the favorable factors (because the unfavorable factors will not exceed a certain limit)

LISA Rong 2022 / 02/07 Shanghai