This seem to be on tune with <a href="https://how.complexsystems.fail/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://how.complexsystems.fail/</a><p>Things in systems (i.e. your body) are not usually independent. If everything goes absolutely smoothly, a disruption may affect more than just the point of disturbance. And if everything is not going so smoothly, and you have an already running problem, or fragility, the emergence of a new one could impact the system more than just the sum of both problems. And that is worse for long running problems that somewhat you dealt with, like accepting some inefficiency or extra cost but not solving them.<p>Part of the idea of Antifragile is that stress for some systems or components may not be "wrong", as they may be ready for an on-production optimization instead of doing a premature one.
> <author quoting Nasim Taleb> “Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile.”<p>Well in that case there's also no word for the exact opposite of robust. I think this is why we use modifiers such as "completely robust" or "extremely fragile".<p>> Most people don’t like writing and can’t maintain relationships primarily through text.<p>Is this generally true (outside of the author's friends), and to what extent (what kinds of friendships) is it true?<p>It sucks what the author is going through.
This was a very insightful essay.<p>For those wondering about the title: it's a post by a cancer survivor about cascade failures, fragility, and their experience coping with complications from cancer treatment.