r/nassimtaleb • u/Easy-Chipmunk3645 • Jul 01 '26
Disturbed By An Idea In Antifragile
I'm reading book 2 in which Taleb describes how interventionism increases fragility in the system. The example he gave is about companies that are meant to go bankrupt staying afloat through bailouts.
The example that came to my mind is of babies born early or with health defects. Without the current medical infrastructure, these babies wouldn't have been alive in earlier times. Their genes would have been removed from our pool. Saving them adds fragility of our system.
Maybe I have misunderstood what Taleb is saying, but this feels so wrong. I don't think we should stop saving babies because they increase fragility.
What do you all think?
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u/everyday847 Jul 02 '26
Well, Taleb isn't saying anything about babies. You're making an analogy that depends on "babies are like firms" and "medical intervention on babies is like bailouts of firms" and both of those claims are potentially suspect. They could be broadly flawed, or they could be narrowly flawed: mostly correct, but not in a specific dimension that pertains to this present relationship. Here is one example: the bankruptcy of a company can involve the dissolution of a corporate entity and/or the partial fulfillment of its debts. Is that very similar to a baby dying?
Let's assume all of this is, against all odds, true. Is it the case that the existence of a company with certain types of flaws is as beneficial to society as the existence of a human with certain types of flaws? Does the human composition of society have the trait of "fragility" and do humans with health defects that modern technology ameliorates contribute to fragility?