The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto)

Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb   “The most prophetic voice of all.” —GQ   “The hottest thinker in the world.” —Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times (London)   “Taleb writes in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.” —The Wall Street Journal   “Idiosyncratically brilliant.” —Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times From the Hardcover edition.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to problems of uncertainty, probability, and knowledge. His main subject matter is “decision making under opacity”—that is, a map and a protocol on how we should live in a world we don’t understand. Although he spends most of his time in the intense seclusion of his study, or as a flâneur meditating in cafés

Practical philosophy C. D. Varn Taleb has made a living showing lack of robustness and fragility in our use of knowledge. Indeed, Taleb's discussion and prediction of the fiscal crises of the late aughts was totally earned, and he was aptly able to show in "The Black Swan" and "Fooled by Randomness" that epistemological humility was direly needed in both science reporting and economics. This book takes these trends and turns them into aphorism. Taking cues from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and E.M. Cioran more than Nietzsche, Taleb's aphorisms are pithy and common sensical. Indeed, perhaps, o. "QUANTA OF WISDOM" according to Yehezkel Dror. Aphorisms are a classical way to present and convey in a nutshell wisdom based on contemplation and experience, as illustrated by the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and aphorism of Nietzsche. Taleb, in-between his books on The Black Swan and Antifragility, which I regard as very important, put together in this brief volume a short collection of aphorism.The title, The Bed of Procrustes,” presents an important idea, well presented in the Procrustes and the Postface: “We humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the. It's a bit ridiculous Of The Wind Some of the things in this book will make you laugh out loud. Too expensive when you can get so many aphorisms for free on the internet. My favorite one was "Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment." - 100 years from now it will be Taleb's best known quote.

The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragile.By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect.The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects—modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized.With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.“Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial Times. With fifty percent more material than the hardcover, this expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes is a standalone book in