- 3,110
- 1,174
Some overview of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility
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.
Simply, antifragility is defined as a convex response to a stressor or source of harm (for some range of variation), leading to a positive sensitivity to increase in volatility (or variability, stress, dispersion of outcomes, or uncertainty, what is grouped under the designation "disorder cluster"). Likewise fragility is defined as a concave sensitivity to stressors, leading to a negative sensitivity to increase in volatility. The relation between fragility, convexity, and sensitivity to disorder is mathematical, obtained by theorem, not derived from empirical data mining or some historical narrative. It is a priori.
— Taleb, N. N., Philosophy: 'Antifragility' as a mathematical idea. Nature, 2013 Feb 28; 494(7438), 430-430
Antifragile versus adaptive/cognitive
An adaptive system is one that changes its behavior based on information available at time of utilization (as opposed to having the behavior defined during system design). While adaptive systems allow for robustness under a variety of scenarios (often unknown during system design), they are not necessarily antifragile. In other words, the difference between adaptive and antifragile is the difference between a system that is robust under volatile environments/conditions, and one that is robust in a previously unknown environment.