Contents
Chapter Summaries and Map xix
Prologue 3
Appendix The triad, or, A map of the world and things along the three properties 20
Book I : The antifragile : an introduction 29
Chapter 1 Between Damocles and Hydra 31
Chapter 2 Overcompensation and overreaction everywhere 41
Chapter 3 The cat and the washing machine 54
Chapter 4 What kills me makes others stronger 65
Book II : Modernity and the denial of antifragility 81
Chapter 5 The souk and the office building 83
Chapter 6 Tell them I love (some) randomness 100
Chapter 7 Naive intervention 110
Chapter 8 Prediction as a child of modernity 134
Book III : A nonpredictive view of the world 141
Chapter 9 Fat Tony and the fragilistas 143
Chapter 10 Seneca's upside and downside 151
Chapter 11 Never marry the rock star 159
Book IV : Optionality, technology, and the intelligence of antifragility
Do you really know where you are going? 169
Chapter 12 Thales' sweet grapes 173
Chapter 13 Lecturing birds on how to fly 187
Chapter 14 When two things are not the "same thing" 202
Chapter 15 History written by the losers 217
Chapter 16 A lesson in disorder 241
Chapter 17 Fat Tony debates Socrates 249
Book V: The nonlinear and the nonlinear
Chapter 18 On the importance of attics On the difference between a large stone and a thousand pebbles 263
Chapter 19 The philosopher's stone and its inverse 290
Chapter 20 Time and fragility 309
Chapter 21 Medicine, convexity, and opacity 336
Chapter 22 To live long, but not too long 357
Book VII : The ethics of fragility and antifragility 373
Chapter 23 Skin in the game : antifragility and optionality at the expense of others 373
Chapter 24 Fitting ethics to a profession 407
Chapter 25 Conclusion 421
Epilogue 425
Glossary 427
Appendix I 435
Appendix II 447
Additional Notes, Afterthoughts and Further Reading 457
Bibliography 481
Acknowledgements 505
Index 507