• Actions express priority

  • Show don't tell; role models matter
  • Corollary: learn in public, the exhaust benefits everyone
  • Courage cannot be faked; the warrior bore the risk of his deserved glory in the service of his countryman. The 'primacy of the risk-taker' has been a feature of nearly all human civilization. When we reward leaders who did not bear commensurate risks we undermine virtue. Society frays as the truly virtuous/courageous bristles as they watch. (Moral hazard of private gains vs socialized losses)

• Action precedes motivation

  • Motion creates information
  • Can't introspect your way to fulfillment — the answers you seek are out there in the world not in your head.
    • Corollary: Expand your circle. Those in your bubble often have the same problems or thought patterns — there’s no new data there.
  • Inertia (1 pushup is harder than 50)
  • "Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" or “I’d rather get a B on time then an A too late”
  • “Finite is your friend” —> lower the mental burden of novel experiments by saying you will only do the new thing 6 times, or spend 5 minutes a day doing X
  • “If you never fail, you’re only trying things that are too easy and playing far below your level."
  • “The general principle of antifragility, it is much better to do things you cannot explain than explain things you cannot do.” – Nassim Taleb
  • Mike Bloomberg: "If you're going to succeed, you need a vision, one that's affordable, practical, and fills a customer need. Then go for it. Don't worry too much about the details. Don't second-guess your creativity. Avoid overanalyzing your new project's potential."

• Convexity and wicked learning environments

Systems that exhibit an asymmetry between gains and losses for a given level of stimulus are described as having a ‘convexity bias’. In math, this is curvature, in financial options it is known as gamma, and in physics, it is the second derivative or acceleration. Antifragile represents a class of phenomena that possess the ‘convexity bias’ property and therefore benefit from disorder or stressors.

Fragile phenomenona hate disorder. A cup of coffee will not tolerate much disorder before spilling or breaking. In an antifragile system, we maximize the result via optionality and the value of the optionality increases with the volatility in the system since the upside expands while the downside remains fixed. Recognizing whether the system you are operating in is fragile or antifragile should guide your approach to maximizing results and/or minimizing risk.

**Lowering your cost per trial allows you to stay in a game longer which can maximize your chance to be exposed to a convex outcome. Starting 5 low cost businesses will expose you to much greater upside than becoming even a highly paid hourly worker like a dentist.**
 The option to shed the businesses that fail and double down on the businesses that thrive derives its value from your worst case being a zero but unlimited upside. Likewise, a person with a highly marketable resume can derive more value from the fact that they can always ‘fall back’ on a job while they pursue a more speculative endeavor. **The resume is valuable not because of the outcome of the job it maps to but because it has lowered the opportunity cost of taking a chance elsewhere.**