How do we benefit from the uncertainty of a world we don’t understand, one dominated by “fat tails”? The answer to this was provided by Nassim Taleb in a book curiously titled Antifragile. Here is the core of the idea. We can think about three categories of objects: Ones that are harmed by volatility and unpredictability, ones that are neutral to volatility and unpredictability, and finally, ones that beneath from it. The latter category is antifragile, like a package that wants to be mishandled. Up to a point, certain things benefit from volatility, and that’s how we want to be. Why? Because the world is fundamentally unpredictable and volatile, and large events like panics, crashes, wars, bubbles, and so on tend to have a disproportionate impact on outcomes. Whenever possible, try to create scenarios where randomness and uncertainty are your friends, not your enemies.
Related: Escape the Fourth Quadrant by changing exposure, not prediction