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Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile (http://en.kgt.bme.hu/files//BMEGT30M400/Taleb_Antifragile__2012.pdf) ought to be mandated reading in any risk and safety curriculum. Just like Rene Amalberti’s thesis (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-6549-8); https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314598759_Approaches_to_Safety_One_Size_Does_Not_Fit_All; 2016), Taleb demonstrates the absurdity of the quest for total safety and the elimination of risk.
Taleb shows how the quest for total safety leads to an absurd contradiction ie. the reduction of risk and the quest for ‘super safety’ makes oneself and groups more fragile. That is, the more one is avoidant of risk and reduces risk, the more one becomes less resilient, less perceptive and more open to catastrophic risk. There is no learning without risk.
Taleb’s arguments are not based on Social Science but on his intense knowledge of Mathematics and probability. Both Taleb and Amalberti describe three approaches to risk:
· Taleb: Fragile, Robust, Antifragile
· Amalberti: Embrace, Manage, Avoid (ultra-adaptive, high reliability and ultra-safe)
Here are some comments from Taleb:
· The road to robustness starts with a modicum of harm (p.37)
· Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens – usually (p.45)
· This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is risky, that it is a bad thing – and that eliminating randomness is done by eliminating randomness. (p.84)
· Indeed, as in medicine, we tend to over-intervene in areas with minimal benefits (and large risks) while under-intervening in areas in which intervention or necessary, like emergencies. (p. 119)
· But the media only report the most anecdotal and sensational cases (hurricanes, freak accidents, small plane crashes, giving us a more and more distorted map of real risk (p. 128)
· Interventionists don’t accept that things can improve without their intervention (p. 201)
· When you are fragile you need to know a lot more than when you are antifragile. Conversely, when you think you know more than you do, you are fragile. (p.215)
· The Procrustean bed in life consists precisely in simplifying the non-linear and making it linear – the simplification that distorts (p.264)
Here are some quotes from Amalberti (2016) worth noting:
· Errors will inevitably occur, patients will sometimes be harmed and the best we can hope for is to respond quickly and minimize damage. (p.27)
· In these professions, accepting risk, and even seeking out risk, forms the essence of their work (.p28)
· The problem is that the constantly changing environment in which they work does not lend itself to managing risks by using rules and procedures (p.28)
· Ultra-safe approach: With this approach, we turn radically from reliance on human skills and ingenuity towards reliance on standardization, automation and avoidance of risk where possible (p.31)
· We commonly assume that safety is achieved by imposing rules and restricting the autonomy of management and workers (p.32)
· The idea of a single ideal model of safety that applies to everything and aims to have zero accidents is too simple. (p. 35)
The work of Taleb and Amalberti tackle the reality of humans in fallible ecological contexts endeavoring to tackle risk the best they can. Both arguments of Taleb and Amalberti tear to pieces the silly global safety industry ideology of zero.
In any ecology, risk is balanced with acknowledgement of fallibility, vulnerability and frailty. The best way to tackle frailty is not in its denial but in its beauty, its joy and awesomeness. With frailty, fallibility and fragility comes learning, not the nonsense about learning currently circulated in safety circles but learning that is embodied and tackles the reality of persons and the collective unconscious.
Isn’t it strange in the safety industry that when it seeks knowledge in some discipline (eg. learning, risk, decision making) it goes to Safety for expertise? Apparently, Safety needs no Transdisciplinarity, the font of all wisdom is Safety. How fascinating how this industry seeks out unqualified people in their own discipline rather than consult qualified expertise in other disciplines. This approach to knowledges makes the industry fragile. Seeeking comfort in compliance and agrement creates greater fragility. Echo chambers are a dangerous way of seeking education and learning.
Any ethic of risk needs to tackle the challenges of fallibility, frailty, vulnerability and uncertainty (https://aeon.co/essays/i-hurt-therefore-i-am-a-new-approach-to-our-shared-vulnerability). The ideology of zero denies fallibility, frailty, vulnerability and uncertainty is a psychosis. |
