| > We’ve found life in the most inhospitable places we can imagine ...on Earth. Take away something as simple as the magnetic field of the planet and suddenly resilient life narrows down to a couple of bacteria, Archaea, or Tardigrades [0] which still die with enough exposure. Anything above 120 degrees C will also cook our goose and every other form of life, again short of a few Archaea [1] which still die a few degrees later. And then there's the most basic of all: water without which some life doesn't die but doesn't exactly "live" either. A handful of spores, spore-like forms, or completely dried forms of bacteria for example can go for eons without water but they're not functioning. And the higher level and complex the organism (thus possibly easier to recognize as life), the higher the chances one of the "subsystems" is more fragile and its failure kills the organism. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioresistance#Radioresistanc... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_121 |
Antifragility plays well with this definition: it doesn't describe the state, but the potential and the ability to change. Taking into account the huge populations, and the fact that only a couple individuals must survive hardship in order for life to prevail, I can see the antifragility.