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

If you Googled "aphorism" and still did not understand its definition, do not buy this book. Taleb writes for those possessing above average intellect and an open mind. I absolutely love this book for its stark wisdom packed into a collection of concise truisms that I will continue to re-read for many years to come.

Some of his terminology is an extension of his other books (specifically, Black Swan). I read this book before Black Swan and found myself confused more than once. I have quickly become a Taleb fan - he is the greatest thinker of our time.

N.N.Taleb, the author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan has published a book of short philosophical and practical aphorism that as I see put words on things that are going on and things that have an impact on our lives and on our twisted society. He hints us of directions in which we all ought to move in order to improve our cooperation with and understanding of other members of our society and on things that really matters in the end.

According to the back cover, Taleb’s key premise behind this collection of “aphorisms” (quips, really) is that Modern Civilization is suffocating and constraining in a way that previous civilizations were not. To put it bluntly, that is just stupid! Clearly, the author is not a student of history.

A bigger problem is that Taleb is neither introspective nor thoughtful. Instead, his tone is at once conceited and narcissistic.
That said, there are occasional clever tidbits scattered throughout and hence I am giving this two rather than one star.

Taleb is the Sam Kinison of contemporary philosophy: He shrieks mischievously about how we delude ourselves and allow others (e.g., consultants and intellectuals) to delude us. "The Bed of Procrutes" tells where not to look for answers and seems grounded in a profound respect for the ever-elusive: human dignity and courage. Unlike his seminal "The Black Swan," which overflowed with examples and explanations (and which should have been proofread more carefully) this book is spare and copy-edited. It is compulsory reading for the aspiring flâneur.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written a very fun book while collecting these aphorisms. If you are not familiar with his works (The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile: How Things Gain from Disorder), you pretty much need to disregard most reviews to experience his wit, erudition and wisdom yourself. Why? Because there are many folks who simply do not "get" him and therefore write from ignorance. Do yourself a favor and experience Taleb for yourself. He will entertain you...provoke you...and always make you think. Reading his books is like an extended conversation with a master thinker.

If you smoke and entertain the utter pointlessness of it all at sometime in your life, you have surely spewed a few hundred of these sayings for idle conversation. While I enjoy a few of these brief insights, it either marks the end of a career or the beginning; for I suffer from the same prothetic (pathetic) irony and ache for the inspiration that is so desperately scribbled within these pages.

One more time around the circle eh, Taleb ;)

This book talks shortly about the more important questions of our life, without the author had here an high role of educator, but with a clear and efficient style. In fact Taleb is author of books of sociology of sure importance, but in "The bed of Procustes" he prefers to use the aphorism. That is at a different level respect the usual works of social analysis , but the force of this choice is the decisive role of the "revival" of the Greek and Latin history in the actual back-ground. For example, the game theory must much to a return of skepticism. But also Thomas Friedman talks about "a flat world", clear analogy with the Greek polis. Nietszche is an old philosopher often cited in several situations also today. Surely an interesting lecture!

This book talks shortly about the more important questions of our life, without the author had here an high role of educator, but with a clear and efficient style. In fact Taleb is author of books of sociology of sure importance, but in "The bed of Procustes" he prefers to use the aphorism. That is at a different level respect the usual works of social analysis , but the force of this choice is the decisive role of the "revival" of the Greek and Latin history in the actual back-ground. For example, the game theory must much to a return of skepticism. But also Thomas Friedman talks about "a flat world", clear analogy with the Greek polis. Nietszche is an old philosopher often cited in several situations also today. Surely an interesting lecture!

The book has many provocative aphorisms, but its self congratulatory tone make me fear that we (readers) will not see anything like Taleb's previous books soon. All he seems to be willing to produce are long - slow - walks.

The compliments on Taleb's first two books were really deserved. They are original and well written. But the effects of these compliments on the writer are far from unforeseen or from been massive consequence events. The book is an enthusiastic self congratulatory note.

An intriguing book based on an interesting thesis, well presented, in saying "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas ..."

"The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself," Taleb begins, and shortly after continues, "to bankrupt a fool, give him information."

Okay, I declare bankruptcy. These aphorisms are an eloquent Luddite protest against the madcap technological excesses and follies of the modern world. I agree. Every new technology blossoms into excess, then retreats into practical use as newer ideas develop. Obsidian was once a new idea in cutting; but, anything this good soon evolved into ornaments and other impractical uses.

It's the inevitable fate of all new technology and all new ideas. All good ideas become complicated into absurdity, until wiser people ask, "Just what are we trying to accomplish here?"

Taleb is a wise man asking such questions, and this book is one of questions and relevant observations. It's the same question anyone with a cell phone and the choice of 250,000 apps might ask, like Taleb, "Why?" and the answer is "I dunno."

In brief, this is an eloquent plea to slow down and think.

What's missing is a recognition of human curiosity which creates all technology, from obsidian blades to Blackberrys. It's a book devoid of curiosity, of Rudyard Kipling's Five Faithful Serving Men and the journalist's eternal questions, "Who? What? Why? When? How?"

Of course, I'm not aware of the Luddites having many answers. But, Taleb, like those who sit and refuse to budge do serve to remind the rest of us that scurrying about accomplishes little. More power to him, and to those who ask, "Is this trip necessary?"

In 2007 Nassim Taleb depicted the then current financial situation in America as a brittle house of cards. The subsequent economic crash and burn made his reputation as a seer, though Taleb would never claim prophesy in any form. "I know nothing about the future," he told the Long Now Foundation in February, 2008. He deals not with prediction, but with the unknown, or how humans fail to deal with the unknown, throw it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist. "The Black Swan" has become Taleb's symbol for the world's inherent unpredictability. The runaway best seller of the same name has seemingly redefined reality itself for some. From this point on the world looks fuzzier. Taleb has since spread his Black Swan-ism everywhere, and people are listening. But how to follow up such a magnum opus? As if to prove the unpredictability of the world, Taleb releases a thin volume of... aphorisms. Could anyone have expected this? The previously verbose wizard of the unknown takes on the most laconic textual genre next to haiku. Didn't aphorisms go out with Cioran? Not to mention that the book's title sounds right out of 1890: "The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms." In recent speeches Taleb has announced that he's now a philosopher. He apparently meant it. But he's still not predicting the future.

This very tiny volume, readable in a short sitting, delineates Taleb's thought in a very different manner than his previous books. It also takes on some new subjects. A short introduction frames the aphorisms to follow. Here the charming tale of Procrustes gets juxtaposed with our modern sensibilities. But the comparison seems appropriate. Where Procrustes lopped the limbs off of his dinner guests so they fit perfectly into his bed, we moderns chop huge sections of reality away to fit our preconceived notions. In other words, we tend to ignore outliers, random events and unforeseen events with huge consequences. This expresses, though more poetically, many of the ideas included in his previous two books. Many of these ideas reappear in brief form throughout the book. For example, the section "Fooled By Randomness" (also the title of his first book), includes this passage: "The tragedy is that much of what you think is random is in your control and, what's worse, the opposite." Our Procrustean tendency to deny randomness appears throughout the book in blatant and subtle ways. But Taleb also takes on other subjects. For instance, in numerous places employment gets compared to slavery rather bluntly. Some will see the obvious parallels, others may find his examples overbearing. Taleb also talks about love, friendship, ethics, science, and other psychological and philosophical tidbits. Some are more successful than others. Some, such as "Never say no twice if you mean it" inspire nothing more than a furrowed brow and a shrug before moving on. Many are laugh out loud funny: "The opposite of success isn't failure; it is name-dropping." Still more contain real brilliance that may cause double-takes. Regardless, some lines will pass with little reaction and smack more of opinion than of insight. A few come off as bizarre. All in all, the book provides enough food for thought to justify a good solid read. Taleb does have some surprising ideas about reality and how people should spend their time. He definitely favors more free time over long hours at work. Not to mention his thoughts on academia and economics. In the end, this book defies absolute summary, like most aphoristic works. But the reading level remains simple throughout, and readers can browse without worrying too much about context (unlike Nietzsche's aphoristic works).

"The Bed of Procrustes" definitely has its charms. Not only that, aphoristic writing really seems like an appropriate style for our modern attention spans. Though wisdom often sounds quaint in a rapidly changing society. In any case don't expect this minute book to delineate Taleb's thought in full. Read "Black Swan" for that (get the recently released second edition). This one gives only a slight overview. Though fun and often intriguing, it does not delve into details. Again, those looking for depth should read "Black Swan" and those wanting more should pick up this one as an enjoyable breather. In the meantime, Taleb will likely keep ruminating. Hopefully something else akin to "Black Swan" will pop out of him. He presented one provocative thought in a recent talk that involved using nature as a model for economies. Nothing in nature is too big to fail, he claimed. One could take out nature's largest entity (say, a blue whale) and the entire system would not falter. Unlike our economy where one or two big players could level everything. Though he didn't give details, Taleb presented this as a possible economic model. He also summed up that "if economists ran nature we would all have one lung, etc." That does seem startlingly true. Perhaps emphasizing efficiency over strength weakens us in the long run. In any case, hopefully Taleb will develop such ideas in the future.

Boring book, read then re-sold. Same old self-help, ponderous junk from someone that didn't have a lot to say in the first place. Save yourself some money and read the inside lid of Snapple caps - they are much more profound.

I read all the aphorism several times before the publication of the book.

I Was afraid. Not sure I will enjoy reading them again. Not sure I will have get the inspiration I got upon the first time i read each.

Surprise. I was unable not to enjoy. I was captivated with the text.

Some aphorisms stuck with me for days on end, making me thinking and thinking.

The thing is that the book reads itself. It captisized me, and the energy and beauty of it makes me reading it.

I throughly enjoyed Black Swan and believing Randomness was an important work over time I have purchased about a dozen copies to share with friends. Being a Taleb fan I was excited about the release of Procrustes especially as I generally enjoy collected quotations and ideas so it was a surprise when I read it the first time and felt the content was weak and lacking in any insight. As I held Taleb in such high regard I re-read it twice over the past year looking for something I may have missed that justified the publishers interest in printing this book. Unfortunately after multiple reads searching for something redeeming my conclusion is this is a trivial work intended to exploit the success of his prior work. Taleb is an insightful economist who may aspire to be a philosopher but as this work shows he isnt a philosopher or even a wise sage. Some of his sayings are even (unintentionally) laughable. As he does have valuable insight to offer us he and his publishers should recognise his limitations and keep his work within his area of domain expertise where he has much to offer.

A self-indulgent outing that reads like it was printed by a vanity press. The author must've dished up each pearl of fatuity thinking he was Confucius. I think I'll make my own book of sayings starting with "He who spends money on the puffed-up sayings of another could've bought a cafe moche instead."

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, I thought I would also enjoy this book. But it was less a "book" than a list of witty quotes - of which only some are true and nearly all display some of Taleb's biases. Would recommend NOT buying - waste of money AND time.

Taleb's collection of thoughts is quite good for a Levantine.
While its wit/irony/pouting are a tad suffocating at times, there are moments
of true comedy which should not be missed. Aware that he has sidestepped
being a "sucker" may be one of his more obvious flaws. Its an engaging
read with some depth, and (for all you the storeites), short.
The work may be best digested with some hummus and a nice Chianti.

I enjoyed reading some of the aphorisms. Others were critical of various groups of people in a way that reminded me of disenchanted teens - sort of splattering paint on them without distinguishing individuals from the mass.

Confusing/vague.
"Atheism (materialism) means treating the dead as if they were unborn. I won't. By accepting the sacred, you reinvent religion." So atheists treat their dead parents as if they had never been born?

Some seem mean-spirited.
"Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say."

Interesting.
"Avoid calling heroes those who had no other choice."

You'll find something to enjoy, no doubt, and something to shake your head over too.

One problem with dropping a quote is that the quote will be out of context. "To be or not to be" makes no sense really if you don't know it's from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and that the main character is at a loss as to what he should do. You really need to read the whole play to get it.

Taleb has come up with an original way to solve this problem: write your quotable aphorisms without context.

This can be useful. George Orwell made that very point about a line Rudyard Kipling wrote: "He travels the fastest who travels alone."

"There is a vulgar thought vigorously expressed. It may not be true", writes Orwell, "but at any rate it is a thought that everyone thinks. Sooner or later you will have occasion to feel that he travels the fastest who travels alone, and there the thought is, ready made and, as it were, waiting for you. So the chances are that, having once heard this line, you will remember it."

Orwell wrote at a time when vulgar simply meant easy or lazy rather than offensive, and while most of Taleb's aphorisms in this book are indeed vulgar in that sense, they aren't as memorable as that line from Kipling. And as far as I am concerned, most of them aren't true.

If you are going to read anything by Nassim Taleb, I recommend his other books, especially Fooled by Randomness. In those books, he develops his insights and you will get something out of even those with which you disagree. But without context and reference, it's near impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Vincent Poirier, Quebec City

a super wonderful book to start with by knowing Prof Taleb, also the author of well known Black Swan. This book comprises of many one-liner quote which are witty, west/east mix of mockery of modernity, or fake modernity. a few that are extracted from the book:
“Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.”
“The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.”
“Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.”
“The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.”
“Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.”
“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.”
“In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.”
“Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.”
“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's newspapers.”
“Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.”
“What they call play (gym, travel, sports) looks like work.”
“The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general;... the wise does neither.”
“You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.”
“Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession.”
“Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.”

I averaged about two highlights per page in this weird little book of econo-philosophico-theologico-amoro-logico-legico (anti-)wisdom, and that's enough of a recommendation in itself.

The author entitles the book 'Incerto 3', 'incerto' meaning the 'unpredictable' or 'random', cognate to English 'uncertain'. So, yes, the book is about as coherent as my neologized, pretend field of study invented up above. It's a book of sayings, of disjointed thoughts - some trite and some profound - on everything from markets to Gregory Palamas and apophatic theology and love. It kind of reminds me of a more erudite, less saccharine, wider-ranging version of 'I Wrote This For You', but sans schtick and photographs.

At the very least it's worth it for a quarter's supply of Facebook statuses or tweets. Taleb strikes again.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the only modern philosopher I follow. What can I say? I dig his style. Maybe the real reason I like Taleb is because he looks a lot like the Italian owner of a restaurant I worked at for five long years. Or perhaps it's how he got me to first hate a book (Black Swan), and then fall in love with another book (Fooled by Randomness). I've since given Black Swan another chance, and now that I've read The Bed of Procrustes: Philopshical and Practical Aphorisms, all I have is Antifragile to complete the tetralogy.

The Bed of Procrustes derives it names from the eponymous Greek, a vile psychopath that tricked vagabonds into his home to wine, dine, and then force them to sleep in an ill-fitting guest bed. No worries, though. Guest too tall for the bed? Procrustes chopped the legs off. Guest too short for the bed? Procrustes stretched the guest out.

Taleb begins with this tale and then follows it with a series of aphorisms that fit the motif of "Procrustean beds." In Taleb's mind, the world is weird and full of folks that make bizarre decisions that defy logic daily, creating their own little Procrustean beds. Characters like Dubai businessmen that need their luggage carried, yet spend two hours lifting weights at the gym shortly thereafter. Or heroes that had no other choice than to be heroes (so you better not call them a hero). These same folks keep guys like Taleb spewing snarky social media ruminations and behavioral economists writing more books.

The Bed of Procrustes is a fantastic, brisk read, even if it does have a "keep-by-the-toilet book" air to it. It makes a great primer to Taleb. If you find his dark sense of humor clever and endearing, then you'll love his longer prose works, Black Swan and Fooled By Randomness. If you think he's full of himself and a bit too cynical, then don't bother.

One should point out that this division is common in Taleb. Perhaps it's why his works only warrant only four-stars on the store reviews and not the typical four-and-a-half. Of course, a four-star writer having more clout than a five-star writer fits the mold of one of Taleb's Procrustean beds.

Here's five aphorisms from The Bed of Procrustes that I particularly liked. Naturally, all credit goes to Dr. Taleb.

"Don't complain too loud about the wrongs done you; it may give ideas to your less imaginative enemies."

"Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee."

"Upon arriving at the hotel in Dubai, the businessman had a porter carry his luggage; I later saw him lifting free weights in the gym."

"Pharmaceutical companies are better at investing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs that match existing diseases."

"Your brain is most intelligent when you don't instruct it on what to do--something people who take showers discover on occassion."

This is just the icing.

You are not supposed to start out by thinking you are smarter than everyone, then pretending to be prophetic. One reviewer said that Mr. taleb made his bones by predicting the financial collapse in 2007. Which means the prophet was three or four years behind everyone else who saw it coming in 2003 or 2004. Instead of writing more, the author should go read the Tao Te Ching, or the Gita, or some of the better Buhddist works, and leave us alone.

I recall coming across this book at a bookstore (remember those?) before knowing anything about the author and thinking he must be quite the arrogant SOB to think that he should or could write such a collection of aphorisms.

I did become convinced that Mr.Taleb might actually have something to offer after reading about half of 'The Black Swan' and seeing and interview of the author on Reason TV. I still decided to borrow the book from the library, rather than purchase it, just to hedge my bet a bit. I now plan to purchase it after finishing it. I can think of no better endorsement.

The content is a lot of what people either love or hate about Taleb: he continuously points to the limits of our knowledge and the modern world's unfettered arrogance in spite of this obvious situation we find ourselves in. We have plenty of information, but not enough wisdom to weed through it or rather to not even bother with most of it. Not a popular message, but true.

There are a few points he makes that I disagree with, but I can easily see how much of what he writes is misunderstood, so maybe I am doing likewise.

Taleb's book of Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms is annoyingly brilliant. I am aware of no other intellect who can offer truisms in such an offensive, condescending, righteous, and elitist manner while also endearing, educating, enlightening, and inspiring.

The one word that has always come to mind when I think of Nassim Taleb is ARROGANT. Based on his aphorism, it sounds like I'm not the only one:

"People reserve standard compliments for those who do not threaten their pride; the others they often praise by calling 'arrogant.'"

And he's right. Again. Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan made it clear to the world that Taleb is a first class thinker who can KNOW, to paraphrase one his sayings, a priori what most can only learn a posteriori. The Bed of Procrustes offers readers a much more robust insight into Taleb's world view and process which is ultimately quite useful for those who seek to find a deeper understanding of the complex world we live in. It may not be surprising that this deeper understanding that Taleb possesses stems from a pursuit that is at odds with the modern, scientific, technological approach to knowledge, but is rooted in one's ability to remove oneself from constraints, biases, artificial effort, and political and societal norms.

Taleb's aphorisms (short form writings which contain deep meaning) manage to tell us how to generate ideas without thinking, achieve progress without working, and reveal mysteries without looking. His targets include fields which rely heavily on the idea that what we know is more robust than what we don't (economics, medicine, academia), those which rely on popular acceptance to be considered influential (politics, journalism, literature) and all who are enslaved by a predictable existence. The aphorisms place a high premium on learning through opening oneself to the universe while knowing how to filter out the noise and avoid the misidentification of signal. Importantly, many of Taleb's saying properly identify error not as something that should be considered shameful or feared, but used as an asset from which we can gain insight.

The Bed of Procrustes will serve as a useful resource for those who see the power of short quotes to convey big ideas and those who wish to develop an approach towards understanding what is true before it slaps you in the face.

I'm late to this party because, having read Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragility, I didn't see the point in reading a bunch of one-liners. However, given Nassim's fondness for heuristics, it makes sense that he'd publish a book with a bunch of one-liners that summarize the different concepts he writes about in his full length books. And that's exactly what I got out of this: heuristics, a bunch of ways to quickly remember ideas he wrote about without having to go back and read their full-length versions all over again.

Not all of the items presented here will be useful to everyone, and some people may only find a few in the batch that they have any use for. I think I'll find different uses for ones I like and new uses for ones I thought I didn't need as time goes on, so in all this was a good investment and will be a keeper.

One more tip for the reader/buyer: The Yogi Book by Yogi Berra is a far more useful heuristics resource than this book, so if I had to pick one, that would be it. Nassim might actually agree with me on that one, but there's the obvious possibility that he doesn't read his own stuff anyway. If in doubt, get both.

Despite the irony, when a skeptical empiricist like Taleb jots down a book of aphorisms to live by, it's a good idea to pay attention. A deceptively quick read, but one in which you might find yourself going back and thinking, "like, whoa, awesome."

Taleb's interests span the sciences and the humanities and the distillations of his thought included here reflect that breadth, that erudition. In other words, this ain't just a 'book of quotes'. There's context to these, both personal and universal. While I don't find him to be particularly 'quotable' - some of the formulations are on the clunky side - he always gets the synapses firing. Stars off for his occasional tin ear, and for his seeming utter disenchantment with humanity.

A few morsels:

"The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by the profane: everything else on your eyelids manipulates you with an ad."

"It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobserved for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable."

"Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry."

"For pleasure, read one chapter by Nabokov. For punishment, two."

"...the toxicity of data increases much faster than its benefits."

So there.

The revised 2016 version of The Bed of Procrustes is filled with savage, oh-no-he-di'-n't aphorisms that draw blood and “go there” (e.g., “If you want strangers to help you, smile. For those close to you, cry”). People who share my love of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s books are often surprised to learn that The Bed of Procrustes is my favorite. I suspect that there are two main reasons for this: (1) the knowledge of how to read an aphorism properly is, by and large, a lost art in this day and age; and, (2) our culture has for the most part forgotten what can be reasonably expected of the aphoristic genre. For instance, we all know that it would be foolish to complain that the documentary about genocide you watched in class didn’t make you laugh. Likewise, we all know that it would be foolish to complain that the slapstick comedy you watched on the plane was silly. But few of us realize that faulting an aphorism for being incomplete or overly categorical is just as foolish.

All that I know about how to read and write aphorisms, I learned from the philosopher Horst Hutter. In his famous Nietzsche Seminar, he taught us that an aphorism is, in essence, like a photograph of a mountain peak (or a trail map to the top). Although the aphorism’s author points you in the right direction, you’re gonna have to climb the mountain yourself. Aphorisms require that the reader do some work. Often some rather hard work. Among other things, you’ve got to remember that the aphorism doesn’t stand alone. Quite to the contrary: the aphorism must be understood within the context of all the rest of the author’s work.

“The worst readers,” Nietzsche maintained, “are those who proceed like plundering soldiers: they pick up a few things they can use, soil and confuse the rest, and blaspheme the whole.” Many of the worst readers Nietzsche spoke of have, it seems, reviewed The Bed of Procrustes. My impression, after reading a few dozen the store reviews, is that The Bed of Procrustes may be Taleb’s most misunderstood book. The tepid reviews of The Bed of Procrustes fail to acknowledge how difficult (and rich) it is. I’ve assigned it to numerous classes at John Abbott College. And my students love it. Be that as it may, most of the really nasty reviews of The Bed of Procrustes on the store.com appear to have been written by people who (a) don’t know how to read carefully, (b) don’t know how to read aphorisms carefully, OR (c) didn’t bother trying to read Taleb’s aphorisms carefully. I’ll give just one example to illustrate my point. One reviewer cites the common phenomenon of the 30-year-old teenager (still living at home, still sponging off of mom and dad) as a refutation of Taleb’s claim that modernity causes us to age prematurely. This is based on a laughable misreading of the aphorism in question. When Taleb says that modernity leads us to age prematurely, he’s quite obviously referring to physiological decrepitude (e.g., the dumpy dude who looks 45 at 28), not emotional maturity (e.g., the street smart kid who talks like a 25-year-old at 13).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb confounds and disappoints people often. To some extent, this is due to an accident of history: the book that made him famous, The Black Swan (2007), was (at least initially) one of those books you could talk about without reading. The chattering classes love books like this. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) is a case in point. Be that as it may, none of Taleb’s other books are like this. All to the contrary. And hence the disappointment. Dynamic Hedging (1997), his first book, is fabulously inaccessible. A friend of mine described it as an esoteric conversation over beers in a London pub. And that pretty much nails it. Dynamic Hedging is filled with the kind of specialized shoptalk my math-whiz, ex-trader of a wife engages in, from time to time, with her old Wall Street buddies at wine-soaked dinner parties—much to the chagrin of our statistically-challenged friends. The same is ultimately true of Fooled By Randomness (2005), despite the fact that it’s written with the intelligent layman in mind. Still, no two books piss people off more than his last two books—Antifragile (2012) and The Bed of Procrustes (2010)—though, truth be told, they piss people off for totally different reasons.

Antifragile gets on people’s nerves because it’s written for serious readers who actually like to read books, as opposed to pretentious intellectual lightweights who like to talk about books they’ve skim-read, or, what’s worse, people who like to talk about books they’ve read about in middlebrow publications like The New York Review of Books. The Bed of Procrustes gets on people’s nerves for far deeper reasons. Like its author, The Bed of Procrustes is really, at bottom, an atavism: a throwback to a bygone era: something which doesn’t quite fit into the 21st century. If Antifragile was written for serious readers, The Bed of Procrustes was (to some extent) written for philosophical people who don’t read much. Of course this notion seems strange and foreign to us, because we’re sons and daughters of modernity, heirs to the printing press, public education, and all the rest. And, as such, we simply cannot understand why a philosophical person might refrain from reading books (on purpose). But this wouldn’t seem odd to Stoics like Chrysippus and Seneca; nor does it seem odd, I suspect, to an oddball like Taleb.

Most ancient philosophers wrote little or nothing. They received and transmitted their ideas via the spoken word. Some did this, of necessity, because they were themselves illiterate; but most did so, like Socrates, because they were profoundly suspicious of the written word. The spirit of philosophy was first and foremost, they thought, a function of speeches not scribbles; it couldn’t be captured in chirography, but it could be conjured in conversation, and, to some extent, encapsulated in aphorisms. For instance, Roman soldiers who could barely read often managed, despite their lack of learning, to commit much of Epictetus’s Enchiridion to memory. Likewise, many an Epicurean shopkeeper living in, say, 2nd-century Athens, would, though functionally illiterate, memorize most (if not all) of Epicurus’s sayings and maxims. These aphorisms contained—albeit in a highly concentrated form—more than enough wisdom to last a lifetime.

If there’s one thing the chattering classes can’t stand about Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one thing they’ll never forgive him for, it’s this: he’s written a book of aphorisms in the 21st century with that Athenian shopkeeper in mind.

This is a small book of aphorisms that centers on human error and limitation in knowledge and judgment. Taleb in the prose appendix to the book explains that he is showing in it the way human beings often by knowing too much, categorize reality in such ways as to totally misunderstand it. Taleb's concept 'The Black Swan' refers to those unpredictable historical events that totally change a whole set of realities. The recent great Black Swan was the 2008 Financial Debacle. Taleb however here goes somewhat beyond the focus on historical and economic matters. He is concerned with human culture and thought in general. He has a deep appreciation for the work of Plato and speaks of how generations of philosophers have been even less than a footnote to him. He also shows a healthy appreciation for the Aphorism as a form and in fact writes a brief history of the form at the close of the volume. The Aphorism is the form which for Taleb is the beginning of wisdom.
I found many of the aphorims interesting and original Taleb has the thought that the good aphorism says something no one thought before. He also speaks of his own early aspirations in poetry, and connects this with the Aphorism as a form.
In one of his aphorisms he says that 'he who would be a philosopher must begin to walk slowly'. Taleb has done some nice slow walking in this book.

This is an authentic collection of aphorisms from Taleb. Like anything written by Taleb, you're bound to disagree with some of the content. If you admire (or enjoy fighting with) Taleb's other works, you'll be satisfied with this one, too. I recommend that you *don't* purchase the audiobook, as I did. I'm not even sure why they made an audiobook. Aphorisms don't work well in audio format. It's too fast-paced. -Ryan Mease

A mixed bag of intelligent, stupid, original and not-so original maxims. Some well written, some less so. The book has the feeling of having been thrown together at the last minute, hence its not very thoughtful organization; strange to say the least, that the third maxim in the lot has to do with pharmaceutical companies. I also didn't appreciate the inclusion of footnotes (!) to some of the maxims, which rips apart the aesthetics of this form; perhaps the author should have included an additional maxim: "Don't trust an aphorist who lacks the discipline and craft to write maxims that do not require explanation."

I find the aphorisms to be nice although this book certainly is a bit short. It reminds me a bit of the book Science Fictionisms (an old book of quotes)
His material and logic I enjoy but I get a sense that nothing will be equal or better than Black Swan (I have not read Fooled by Randomness yet).
The last few pages of this where he explains his thinking bump this one up another star. That way it does not leave the reader hanging.
Recommended for a short read.

What a hugely disappointing book. Taleb is certainly capable of interesting and cogent writing but he displays almost none of that in this effort.

The aphorisms he offers up are rarely true; even more rarely are they both true and witty; rarest of all are those that are witty, truthful and original. Yes, sadly most of the platitudes that can be considered words of wisdom are just Taleb rehashing well-known and time-worn bromides.

Some of his gems just seem plainly wrong:

"Modernity's double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer." Really? Because it seems to me that people are taking much longer to grow up nowadays than they did decades earlier. Adolescence is lasting well into the third decade (and later!) of life for a great many people that I see around me.

"The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believe what he said." A mature person could only feel pity toward both the liar and the poor individual who feels the need to be deceptive in return, and even worse, believes that there is any kind of victory to be had in such an exchange.

"You never win an argument until they attack your person." So winning an argument is (only) accomplished when the person you're arguing with gets so frustrated and angry that he resorts to insults and personal attacks? If that's how you feel, let me offer words of wisdom: you need to ask yourself why you were in that argument to begin with. Obviously, it wasn't to make your point of view clear to the other person.

"Saying 'the mathematics of uncertainty' is like saying 'the chastity of sex' - what is mathematized is no longer uncertain, and vice-versa." Taleb is surely familiar with quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which is derived from beautiful mathematics and is a vital part of the most successful theory (in terms of predictive power - 100%) ever devised. So he knows this is not so.

There are some worthwile witticisms. For instance: "The most painful moments are not those we spend with uninteresting people; rather, they are those spent with uninteresting people trying hard to be interesting." And somethimes they are moments spent with interesting people trying too hard to be profound.

I think the problem lies with the premise of this book. The greatest thinkers and cleverest people in history have each uttered perhaps a handful of aphorisms that history chooses to make note of. I'm willing to bet that if Mark Twain, Winston Churchill or Albert Einstein tried to come up with hundreds of them to fill the pages of a small book, they would have produced similar garbage.

Taleb's sharp and to the point critiques ,of bankers and economists especially, is worth the price of the book alone.He tells the alert reader quite bluntly that we have monumental problems that the " experts " can't solve.Furthermore,the " experts" are the problem.The reader needs to spend some time mulling over what this means for our society and world.The reader will eventually "see" that the captains of the American ship, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke,do not have any idea about where the ship is sailing off to nor even where the ship of state is currently at.Highly recommended.

The Bed of Procrustes is a collection of aphorisms, which mainly concern knowledge (and its limit) and how human beings perceive their reality and lives.

Taleb argues that in order to overcome our limitation in knowledge and understanding, we try to generalize and simplify our lives, thus making it more suitable for our over-simplified models. He tries to illustrate these limitations, in his unique way, by writing very witty and enjoyable aphorisms.