“Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility)
Nicholas Taleb, the concept’s originator expressly differentiates this idea from “robustness” and “resilience”, which he describes as the ability to simply survive threats and stressors in the environment.
To be antifragile is to gain information and capability as a systemic evolutionary process within a complex network that co-evolves with the participants and their ecosystems.
Adaptive and Anti-fragile Dynamic Systems
“An adaptive system is one that changes its behavior based on information available at time of utilization (as opposed to having the behavior defined during system design). This characteristic is sometimes referred to as cognitive. While adaptive systems allow for robustness under a variety of scenarios (often unknown during system design), they are not necessarily antifragile. In other words, the difference between adaptive and antifragile is the difference between a system that is robust under volatile environments/conditions, and one that is robust in a previously unknown environment.” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility)
Choice Theory in Social Networks
Compensating Mechanisms
Integrating Anti-fragility* into Complex Systems
A broad-based compensating mechanism for network instability and sometimes the source of novelty in networks is the concept and practices of anti-fragility as developed by Nicholas Taleb (2014). The current research program integrates anti-fragility concepts and practices such that individuals and their networks may develop novel capabilities as they evolve to become stronger and more capable. We investigate how those changes (sometimes called second-order effects) may be important mediators to other instabilities, returning the systems to more stable states or creating new pathways and opportunities.
For more on Anti-fragility: See Taleb’s (2014) book Anti-fragile – Things that Gain from Disorder, as a starting point.
Failing Fast and Efficiently