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krsree | 9 years ago

I have been following his work (and social media discussions) since Black Swan, and it seems to me that the ideas are becoming stronger (to me) with time. The later ideas reinforcing and expanding on earlier themes. For example, Black Swan was about unpredictable and catastrophic risk, later Anti-fragility was about how to deal with risks including Black Swans, his work in progress (Skin in the game) is how to make systems more anti-fragile.

I encountered his ideas (10 years back!) at a time when my default way of thinking was very intuitive instead of systematic and analytical thinking (which many of my high-performing peers had developed over the course of engineering education). Perhaps because of this, I took to his ideas like duck (swan) takes to water. I never acquired a systematic(analytical) thinking approach despite being in academia till mid twenties though I could hack decent academic performances. It was in an engineering profession that I realized the advantage and importance of systematic thinking and tried to consciously develop it.

Strangely, the use of systematic thinking has also actually increased my appreciation of his ideas after a period of wavering doubt. The systematic (analytical) way of thinking is too seductive and it's successes too apparent that it appears far superior to my earlier intuitive way of thinking. However, I am gradually coming to realize that the intuitive way of thinking has a deep logic of it's own which is not visible or may not even be decipherable. It's logic can only be inferred by its effect which ofcourse a critic can also be ascribe to luck!

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