What does antifragility mean?

Anti-fragility is a concept initially coined by Nassim Taleb, and its definition is deceptively simple: it means \”the opposite of fragility.\” In other words, anti-fragile gets more potent when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors. You are an anti-fragile system if you become more robust when everything around you is getting chaotic.

Anti-fragility has been used in several industries. The term \”antifragile\” was first applied to software development by Google\’s director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil. He dubbed the technique \”anti-fragile programming,\” describing it as an approach in which programmers embrace uncertainty and chaos by building systems that thrive on change with no surprises (my emphasis).

The anti-fragility concept has also been applied to marketing, finance, architecture, engineering, healthcare policy, governance, genetics, and biology.