Anti-fragility, Nicholas Taleb, Tim Ferris, Pareto, 80/20
When doing philosophy or systems engineering, I always get
to the point fastest by using the verb “is.”
What is its being. What is its
state of being. What is its isness. Was it not Hegel in his magisterial "Phenomenology of Spirit," who was trying to get to the
this?
I was reading Nicholas Taleb’s book on Antifragility and
noticed that he said something about an author or philosopher having only one
idea – one central idea bring together his entire work. I think that my entire work is centered on
the simplification concept of how to get from point A to point B in any field
and circumstance. It is similar to a
cause and effect diagram. Once I can
break something up into small enough pieces and get the description of each
piece to get from point A to point B, then I can reassemble the system with a
complete understanding of the essence of the system. And, if I can prove that I can get from point
1 to point 2, then I can be fairly confident that I can get from point 1 to
point one million. This is similar to the
computer science effect and where computers serve their purpose – iterative computations.
This is also linked to the Pareto principle. It forces you to identify the most important
features of any system or problem at hand.
The top 20% of the inputs cause 80% of the outputs in every system. Sometimes the proportions are skewed even
further – 90/10 or even 95/5 and sometimes 99/1. Tim Ferris in his book “The 4 Hour Workweek”
made this same point in reference to personal effectiveness.
Freddy Martini
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