Speaker(s): Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Recorded on 5 December 2012 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.
Taleb believes that many of the best and most successful systems in the world (such as evolution) have antifragility at their heart. Conversely, those systems which reject antifragility and suppress volatility (such as modern politics and banking) become weaker and less able to withstand the inevitable shocks – the major tragedy of modernity, according to Taleb. But antifragility is not simply an antidote to “black swan events”. Taleb believes that understanding antifragility makes us less fearful in accepting the role of these events as necessary for history, technology, knowledge and everything.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb spends most of his time as a flâneur, meditating in cafés across the planet. A former trader, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University. He is the author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, an international bestseller which has become an intellectual, social and cultural touchstone. This event marks the publication of his new book, Antifragile.