In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary.

The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. What’s more, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events.

Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call  efficient  is not efficient at all? Why should you write your resignation letter before starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives?