Antifragile · Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Via negativa examples

Curated by · reviewed 2026-06-01

Often the surest improvement comes from removing, not adding. Subtracting the harmful or unnecessary beats piling on more solutions.

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5 examples of via negativa

  1. Health by subtraction

    Cutting sugar, smoking, and stress does more than any supplement you could add.

  2. Editing a draft

    Deleting the weak sentences improves the writing more than adding clever new ones.

  3. Decluttering

    Removing what you don't use makes a home work better than buying more storage.

  4. The simpler product

    Taking features out can make software more loved than cramming features in.

  5. Avoiding stupidity

    Munger's version: you get rich less by being brilliant and more by consistently not being dumb.

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