I forgot my keys the other day and it made me realize how unintuitive antifragility really is. These may not seem connected, but let me tell my story.
During Outside Lands, I stayed in Berkeley because it was easier for Stevie and me to travel to SF together. Naturally, I wanted less things to carry, so everyday I went out to Outside Lands, I went without my keys. So, when I finally went home to my apartment, I managed to leave once last time without my keys. Because I broke my routine, I forgot my keys.
When I first went to college, I lived in the dorms. The door to my room automatically locked when I left the room. It thus became very important to remember my keys before I left my room. I developed a threshold routine. I checked my pockets for my wallet, my phone, my keys, and a pen.
This threshold routine is rather robust. It’s rare that you’ll leave your place without crossing through a door. I don’t usually leave my place through the window. So, no matter what you have to do in the morning, it’s more difficult to forget your keys.
Compare this to dealing with an essay you just composed. If you print it out and leave it in the printer, it’s rather easy to forget it in the morning. This is fragile. If you put it in your backpack the night before, that’s more robust because it’s less likely that you’ll leave without your backpack. Of course, some emergency may make you forget your backpack, but everything’s about odds with me.
As I thought about all this when I was locked out of my apartment, I pondered, “What would it mean to have an antifragile strategy for remembering my keys?” I think it would mean that the more my routine got fucked up, the more likely it would be for me to remember my keys. And that is a very, very strange thing. I don’t think there exists an antifragile strategy for remembering one’s keys. I think that are ones with different levels of robustness. My dad told me he used to keep a spare key in his wallet. That adds more robustness, but it still isn’t antifragile.
I can think, “How can I make it less likely to forget my keys?” Yet it’s very, very strange to think, “How can changing my routine cause me to be more likely to remember my keys?” Ugh, it’s even hard to form that question in a non-awkward way.
When I first read Taleb’s explanation of antifragility, he noted that a word for the opposite of fragility didn’t exist in English and many other languages. I think that one part of the reason is because of the concept’s strangeness. If i think of antifragility in terms of the hydra, it makes sense to me. However, in many other situations, such as remember my keys, it has no application.
Keep your keys on you ALL THE TIME, like strapped to your leg or attached to a piercing. That way when you forget your keys, you have them with you. The danger is of course, that this arrangement might drive you or possibly family members crazy.
Very interesting haha. I think between fragile or robust or antifragile, there are things that can only be one of these, or two, or all three. He defines that “complex” systems are anti-fragile. Engineered or complicated but not complex systems are fragile, maybe robust, but not sure out of these which can actually be made into antifragile.
Antifragile strategy… Use a door that automatically locks and require a key on both sides. You need the keys to get OUT of the house.
Of course that causes other problems (like what if there’s a fire and you’ve lost you key), but it would be an anti-fragile solution for the “normal” case and the outlier would be an… outlier.