第二步：精读重点段落

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

第六段（精读）
Nassim Taleb took care of this dilemma by giving us a word for what we’re looking for: antifragile. It describes things that benefit from shock and thrive in volatile environments, because as they’re stressed and put under pressure, they get better, not worse. Can you think of an example? Tough, right? Here’s one: When Hercules fights the Hydra, every time he slices off one of her heads, two grow back. So for every time the beast is hurt, it actually gets stronger. That’s an example of being antifragile.

• thrive vi. 繁荣
• volatile adj.多变的
• slice off 切掉

第十二段（精读）
The fragile parts, the tissue in your muscles, is broken down – the failure is reported to the system. In order to ensure future success, your body now overcompensates for this shock, by building extra capacity to handle even bigger shocks better. Overnight, as you sleep and recover, your muscles are rebuilt and they’re now a bit stronger than before. Usually, the human body is incredibly efficient, and doesn’t want any excess capacity “lying around”. But in the case of being antifragile, your body builds redundancy in order to prepare for future extreme situations and emergencies.

• overcompensate vi. 超量补偿
• redundancy n. 多余的东西

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

Antifragile Summary

1-Sentence-Summary:

第一段
Antifragile reveals how some systems thrive from shocks, volatility and uncertainty, instead of breaking from them, and how you can adapt more antifragile traits yourself to thrive in an uncertain and chaotic world.

• antifragile adj. 反脆弱的

第二段
The author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is a statistician and investigates problems of randomness and uncertainty. He argues that some systems thrive when exposed to shocks and crises, instead of breaking under their pressure. Here are 3 lessons that will show you what it means to be antifragile.

Lesson 1: Fragile items break under stress, antifragile items get better from it.

第三段
We all know the label on boxes with glass inside them that reads “Fragile – handle with care”, and we’ve all seen more than one scene in a movie where someone throws a package like that, resulting in a glass shattering noise.

第四段
You know that fragile things break when you shock them and toss them around – volatility does them no good. But when you think about it, there isn’t really a word that describes things, which are the opposite, is there?

第五段
We might talk about something being robust or durable, but that really just means it can resist shocks and stress better than fragile items – but it doesn’t benefit from them. You’d still label the boxes you ship robust things in with “Handle with care”, not with “Please handle roughly”.

• robust adj. 坚韧的
• durable adj. 耐用持久的

第六段（精读）
Nassim Taleb took care of this dilemma by giving us a word for what we’re looking for: antifragile. It describes things that benefit from shock and thrive in volatile environments, because as they’re stressed and put under pressure, they get better, not worse. Can you think of an example? Tough, right? Here’s one: When Hercules fights the Hydra, every time he slices off one of her heads, two grow back. So for every time the beast is hurt, it actually gets stronger. That’s an example of being antifragile.

• thrive vi. 繁荣
• volatile adj.多变的
• slice off 切掉

Lesson 2: An antifragile system usually consists of many fragile parts.

第七段
There are quite a few more good examples of antifragile systems, one being the evolutionary process. Evolution itself is incredibly antifragile – we’ve evolved from our ancestors based on the genetic features and traits which helped us survive the most and succeed.

• trait n. 特性

第八段
However, that also meant many humans before us had to die. Any individual specimen of a species is usually fragile – every human being or animal can die and quite easily so. But, because the system can use life and death as indicators of success and failure, the evolution of species in itself is antifragile.

第九段
For example, our hands weren’t always built to handle tools so well. Through evolution it became apparent that the more advanced our hands got, the longer we could survive, so eventually our genetic code morphed to include the incredibly refined hands we all have today.

第十段
So for an antifragile system to work, its individual parts must be fragile, because the success and failure of these parts serves as important feedback for the system as a whole and allows it to get better in chaotic circumstances.

• serve as 起..作用

Lesson 3: Antifragile systems work, because they build extra capacity when put under stress.

第十一段
But how exactly does that happen? Why does antifragility work? Actually you do experience it quite often, if you exercise regularly, that is. When you go to the gym and lift really heavy weights, and when you feel the burn, you push on and do just one more rep – that’s when growth happens.

第十二段（精读）
The fragile parts, the tissue in your muscles, is broken down – the failure is reported to the system. In order to ensure future success, your body now overcompensates for this shock, by building extra capacity to handle even bigger shocks better. Overnight, as you sleep and recover, your muscles are rebuilt and they’re now a bit stronger than before. Usually, the human body is incredibly efficient, and doesn’t want any excess capacity “lying around”. But in the case of being antifragile, your body builds redundancy in order to prepare for future extreme situations and emergencies.

• overcompensate vi. 超量补偿
• redundancy n. 多余的东西

第十三段
That’s how stress can prepare your body for even bigger stress and it’s building this extra capacity that lies at the core of why being antifragile is so helpful to thrive in critical situations.