A self-proclaimed conjugation for the aware searching of meaning and concepts inspired by Nicholas Talib’s coining of the phrase Antifragile (-To improve with shocks and turmoil) and his reasoning for the term best described in his book but also well analyzed by Shane Perrish of FS, which these excerpts are sourced from (https://fs.blog/2014/04/antifragile-a-definition/):
“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.”
“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet.”
In the era of data abundance, society is inundated with knowledge with a multitude of opinions in a drip of feeds with no labels. As I was inspired by Nicholas Talib and his philosophically poetic argument for the reverse of fragility, I looked at the world around us and the terms that we use to define and contextualize our actions. What I noticed from the discourse about combating fake news and echo chambers was the lack of a term that embodies the advice. Phrases like ‘being thoughtful’ and ‘cautious skepticism’ were being used to explain how one should learn/digest information. However, these phrases don’t invoke the process of perspective-aware research/learning that is needed to limit our biases. ‘ Being thoughtful’ invokes a mind that is full of concepts and knowledge but doesn’t address the learning process. Even when we look at learning terminology, we get a breakdown of the types of learning based on the processing (i.e. auditorial/visual), the source (i.e. inductive/ deductive) but these constructs don’t capture identity’s subliminal effects learning.
One of the words that captures some of the nuances is credibility, but how do we determine that credibility? Also, it is possible to credible in an argument without addressing the holistic views and angles that other perspectives uncover. Therefore the aim of this conjugation, delvewise, is to invoke awareness to the exploration of ideas.
Resources:
https://fs.blog/2014/04/antifragile-a-definition/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility
https://thetrainingassociates.com/blog/8-shortcuts-to-stay-relevant-in-learning-development/ = the cool image
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