The Bed of Procrustes

Who the hell is Procrustes and “Are you going to bore me with another book review?” Grow up and get wise! Procrustes is a figure from Greek Mythology, or ancient religion, if you prefer. Here’s the short version; Procrustes was a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. A book about a weirdo? Not exactly. Nassim Taleb’s view of the modern world, as expressed in this book of aphorisms, is that humans are being modified to fit technology, reality being bent to fit economic models, diseases being invented to sell drugs, and the breadth of intelligence being limited to what can be tested in a classroom. Taleb’s inventive and often humorously pithy remarks will wake you up, make you think, and make you laugh out loud. Don't like to laugh? Pick another book. Sounds a bit too New Age, or maybe esoteric? Check out this tidbit: The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believe what he said. Or how about this one: If you want people to read a book, tell them it’s overrated. Part psychology, part insightful, part surgeons knife slicing through marriage, economics, politics, and everyday life, you could read this book in an hour….but you won’t. Your brain will catch on a phrase and stop your thoughts like a rowboat’s bow hitting a rocky shore. Your mind will churn. Often you’ll look around for someone to share these darts of logic, these reflective mirrors. You’ll come across: Nothing is more permanent than “temporary” arrangements, deficits, truces, relationships; and nothing is more temporary than permanent ones. The book gets laid aside. Your attitude swings this way and that. You mentally review and ponder. Hours or days later, you once again grab the book by the throat and your rowboat floats free of the shoals. Nassim Taleb’s books are like that. They challenge, but at the same time entertain. Have preconceptions? They’re sure to be twisted and blurred. Think your persuasions won’t be carved with Taleb’s scalpel? Think again. But, try as you might, you can’t forget this book and the sometimes obtuse approach that unravels things you’ve previously thought about and things you’ve never considered. The Bed of Procrustes. Pick it up once and you’ll pick it up again and again. [...]

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.

Aphorism: -noun a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton). Yes, the author is very arrogant and pompous, I would not dispute that with the other reviewers of this book. I would add that ego strength is what leads to success in the real world. While reading this book I could just see Taleb reading classics and pondering the world while sipping a drink in a quaint cafe. Some of his thoughts are offensive to many, some are incredibly profound and true, others may be over the readers head. I gave this book five stars because I found it very interesting, thought provoking, and hard to put down. It forces the reader to think. A deep thinker like Taleb is rare is this world of political correctness, materialism, consumption, and many people just thinking what they were programmed to think. Here are my favorites from the book: When conflicted between two choices,take neither. A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence. Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties. Knowledge is reached (mostly)by removing junk from people's heads. They agree that chess training only improves chess skills but disagree that classroom training (almost) only improves classroom skills. Robust is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who dislike it. The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds. I really enjoyed reading this book and pondering on the aphorisms.

A better title for "The Bed of Procrustes" might have been "Crusts of Bread from a Pro." The classically accented moniker refers to a character in Greek mythology who fed guests at his road house and, afterward, either cut off some part of their body to fit the bed he offered them, or stretched them to achieve the same. Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb resorts to Procrustes' bed as a parable for modern thought. Taleb says his collection of disparate aphorisms are about the Procrustean bed in which humanity currently reclines, "facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences." Fair enough, although it was not easy for highwayscribery to see a way that, "You never win an argument until they attack your person," however true, fits into the author`s main idea of "how we deal, and should deal, with what we don`t know..." Not to say that there are no engaging or provoking passages found in this mélange of thoughts plucked from Taleb's mind. highwayscribery liked this one and found it fitting the author's purposes: "Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases." Then there is this one, which many would probably take issue with: "To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it." Tell that to Bernie Madoff's clients. As a journalist, highwayscribery took exception to this offering as well: "An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant, the opposite." In fact, if you're a businessperson or academic or, worse, hold down a job, you may find yourself among those polluting the purity of classical thought Mr. Taleb so reveres: "Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee." "The Bed of Procrustes," is littered with criticisms of those who aren't lucky enough to have Random House pay them for musings conjured during long, carefree walks through a blessed and jobless existence. There may be, for certain readers, something off-putting about the author's deigning to know what is right from wrong. These aphorisms imply that Taleb is on the side of the angels he hopes to hook us up with. To wit: "I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity." (The way I, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, do). Anyway, this assembly of vaguely organized sentiments possesses its gems and is usually entertaining, which may or may not have been the author's intent. You don't have to agree with every thought you read to be engaged. Besides, if nobody assumed they were smarter than the rest of us, there'd be no books attempting to advance our thinking. Perhaps affecting this assessment is the fact highwayscribery is unfamiliar with Taleb's earlier effort, "The Black Swan," which appears to be his signature work and the foundation upon which "The Bed of Procrustes" is built. Which is another way of saying those who seek this book may gain more than those who are found by it.

Nassim Taleb's book of aphorisms is full of distilled wisdom that will linger in your mind throughout the day, and give you a new way of looking at things that may never have occurred to you. Most are easy to comprehend on the first reading. Some of them might not make sense to you. If so, leave them be, and come back to them another time. Taleb is a contrarian thinker (and a practitioner of what he preaches), and that might unsettle some people, but his ideas ring true. Although this book is short, it is not meant to be digested in one sitting. It's best to think about what he says, and how they apply to life, society, circumstances, and what you might have taken for granted as being conventional wisdom that is flat out wrong. Given the nature of aphorisms, there is no discussion. They just "are". That by no measure doesn't mean that they can't be discussed or debated.. Discuss them with friends, family. Argue about them. Some aphorisms are meant to upset the status quo. Some may feel angered reading something that is the antithesis of their deeply held beliefs. I find its best to be honest with myself, heed the wisdom, apply it to what I know, and admit that I was mistaken to formally strongly held beliefs if it is warranted (I do this with all new information, so this applies to anything I might learn). I don't agree with everything Taleb says, but I do agree with most of it, some to more or lesser extent. (I've read all his books recently, one after the other). To the naysayers - 1) Taleb isn't bitter towards people, he just has no patience for people he sees as fraudsters; people with no skin in the game. Academics, economists, financial gurus, journalists, politicians etc. who reverse engineer data to fit their hypothesis and then seek to tell everyone else what to do and how to think. And these people can cause immeasurable harm to the public without any corresponding harm to themselves, and often times will gain from the damage they cause. 2) Some mistake him as being pompous. He just has strong feelings towards frauds, and isn't afraid to express them. He likes people who are real, such as chatty taxi drivers who in his view may have more wisdom than career academics or those who hold them out as being super geniuses who like to dazzle with their precieved brillience.

This little book of wisdom is filled with wit, wisdom and wrath- on journalist, bankers and yes even psychologist. A combination that makes this book an interesting read

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, often too common sensical. This is short book, easy to read, and even when you disagree with Taleb, he is humorous enough not to lose you. Indeed, I find his aphoristic writing to be easier to read stylistically than his more journalistic and extended think piece works. In many senses, these aphorisms prove that Taleb is a practical philosopher, but not necessarily a precise or consistent one. Yet the theme of the need of epistemic humility and the robustness of moral and aesthetic visions versus knowledge claims dominate the value.