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In his book, Taleb presents the idea of "Optionality" as one of the core strategies for creating antifragility, and it maps perfectly to the idea of maximizing your informational advantage and emotional resonance. In his own words:
"Options, any options, by allowing you more upside than downside, are vectors of antifragility.
If you 'have optionality,' you don’t have much need for what is commonly called intelligence, knowledge, insight, skills, and these complicated things that take place in our brain cells. For you don’t have to be right that often. All you need is the wisdom to not do unintelligent things to hurt yourself (some acts of omission) and recognize favorable outcomes when they occur. (The key is that your assessment doesn’t need to be made beforehand, only after the outcome.)
Option = asymmetry + rationality
The mechanism of optionlike trial and error (the fail-fast model), a.k.a. convex tinkering. Low-cost mistakes, with known maximum losses, and large potential payoff (unbounded). A central feature of positive Black Swans."
Seeking an informational advantage means that you know your counterpart's stance before you reveal yours, which gives you the option of orienting toward them in the most adaptive way possible. One of the best examples of this is finding out their pre-defined pay range for a job before telling them what you make today or are hoping to make.
Seeking emotional resonance also provides a great deal more options to you because it's a way of amassing more "chips to spend" interpersonally. If someone has goodwill toward you and is feeling positive "vibes," they're more likely to go along with what you present, more likely to make concessions to keep those good vibes flowing, and less likely to say or do something that would turn things sour.
These two factors, when combined, create a positive feedback loop that just works. After reading Antifragile, we now understand more deeply why it works, which means that we can get even better at the skills and their application.
Quote we're contemplating
RIP RBG 💔
“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
“You can disagree without being disagreeable.”
“So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”
“Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent.”
“Another often-asked question when I speak in public: “Do you have some good advice you might share with us?” Yes, I do. It comes from my savvy mother-in-law, advice she gave me on my wedding day. “In every good marriage,” she counseled, “it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through fifty-six years of a marital partnership nonpareil. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court of the United States. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
- The Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsberg (1933-2020)
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