Fragile systems break under stress. Robust ones resist it. A third category, antifragile, improves because of it. The central mistake of modern civilisation is eliminating small stressors, which creates conditions for catastrophic failure. Taleb's method: optionality over forecasting, via negativa over addition, skin in the game over delegation.
A design heuristic: prefer reversible over irreversible, modular over monolithic, redundant over optimised. Buildings and sites should have barbell exposure, with extreme robustness in structure and high adaptability in programme and services. Prefab modules that can be relocated are antifragile. Centralised HVAC serving fifty rooms is fragile.
Taleb can licence institutional nihilism. Not all coordination is fragility. Some regulation keeps people alive. And barbell strategies assume you can absorb the downside, which not everyone can.
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