Comment by jakubsimek on An Equilibrium of No Free Energy · 2017-11-06T17:53:46.872Z · LW · GW

I wonder what do you think of Antifragility notion by Taleb and where would it fit. The central point is that "quantity matters" and one shall divide the investment into as many motivated research teams, startups or ideas as possible - to hit the "blackswan" rare but extremely beneficial intervention. For example M-Pesa was a once in a decade project - DFID gave a 1m pound grant to Vodafone and they matched it. And thus scaled a simple idea that created mobile banking based on SMS- the only universal mobile app besides calling. Now a third of Kenyan GDP flows through M-PESA. Taleb actually writes about much more extreme and obvious trillion dollar ideas that lied on the ground for 1000 years - steem engine being one. Available in Ancient Greece as a toy. Or wheels - only used by Aztecs on toys but not for transportation.

So just to get to SAD - I never heard of that condition, so I suppose it might be rare or recent. And thus only a few researchers might be working on them. And these invention dont come from science labs usually. But from makers. So how many startups tackle this issue? If only a dozen - we need to increase their quantity. But in the Scandinavia or Belarus you find heavily lit streets and even blocks of flats for exactly this reason - to fight depressioon due to short days.