Nick

Nassim Taleb's Via Negativa

“Actions that remove are more robust than those that add because addition may have unseen, complicated feedback loops.” - Nassim Taleb

Screenshot 2024-12-17 at 3

A trap I consistently fell in(prob still do) was adding in a thing or action that would alleviate some problem at hand. When I read Nassim Taleb's Anti-Fragile, the concept of Via Negativa connected some dots and rolled back that assumption that all fixes should take form of an outside solution to be added in.

His idea, simplified, is that removing components from a problem is a simpler and less complex strategy than complicating the problem with additional "solutions". The following examples in my own life came to mind.

"In addition, a substantial number of the problems caused by buggy software, which occurs because vendors keep adding more and more features to their programs, which inevitably means more code and thus more bugs" - Andrew Tannenbaum

"And I have friends, intelligent friends, who don't like to read because they get - it's not just bored - there's an almost dread that comes up, I think, here about having to be alone and having to be quiet. And you see that when you walk in. When you walk into most public spaces in America it isn't quiet anymore; they pipe music through. And the music's easy to make fun of 'cause it's usually really horrible music. But it seems significant that we don't want things to be quiet, ever, anymore. " - David Foster Wallace

Via Negativa has been helpful in different domains in my life and no doubt will continue to be. Thanks for the realization, Taleb.