[Mehrbod]

With few exceptions, those who dress outrageously are robust or even antifragile in reputation; those clean-shaven types who dress in suits and ties are fragile to information about them.



I’ve discovered a trick when giving lectures. I have been told by conference
organizers that one needs to be clear, to speak with the fake articulation of TV
announcers, maybe even dance on the stage to get the attention of the crowd. Some try
sending authors to “speech school”—the first time it was suggested to me I walked out,
resolved to change publishers on the spot. I find it better to whisper, not shout. Better to
be slightly inaudible, less clear. When I was a pit trader (one of those crazy people
who stand in a crowded arena shouting and screaming in a continuous auction), I
learned that the noise produced by the person is inverse to the pecking order: as with
mafia dons, the most powerful traders were the least audible. One should have enough
self-control to make the audience work hard to listen, which causes them to switch into
intellectual overdrive.
This paradox of attention has been a little bit investigated: there
is empirical evidence of the effect of “disfluency.”





Nietzsche’s famous expression “what does not kill me makes me stronger” can be
easily misinterpreted as meaning Mithridatization or hormesis. It may be one of these
two phenomena, very possible, but it could as well mean “what did not kill me did not
make me stronger, but spared me because I am stronger than others; but it killed others
and the average population is now stronger because the weak are gone.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder