The Bed of Procrustes is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game.By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this … 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
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Taleb is probably a genius. I suspect he thinks so. However, a read of this book may convince you also. There is plenty of food for thought here. Classic Taleb…
My then-twelve-year-old son picked up the book at my local bookstore and could not put it down. While many of the aphorisms in the book were beyond his understanding, enough of the material pulled him in and made him rethink previous positions. As I kept consuming one coffee after another and pulled a few books off the shelves to help illustrate the points being made I realized just how useful that little book was. I bought three copies that day and many more after the book was put on the discount shelves for clearance.
Readers of Taleb’s other books will recognize that The Bed of Procrustes deals with how people deal with things that they do not know and are incapable of understanding. Schools are a perfect example of this as they try to fit every unique child into the same tiny box and want him to recite whatever they are indoctrinated into as his other classmates. Taleb is clear about the content of the book as he writes, “Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts—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, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences.”
In recent times we have seen some of those explosive consequences. When Taleb writes, “For instance, few realize that we are changing the brains of schoolchildren through medication in order to make them adjust to the curriculum, rather than the reverse,” it is easy to think of what has happened with all of those misfit students that chose to show the world that it has no meaning by shooting up their schools and hurting some of the students and teachers that could not understand them.
Taleb begins by briefly going over the myth of the cruel Procrustes (whose name meant ‘the stretcher’ in ancient Greek). Procrustes, whose real name may have been Damastes or Polyphemon, lived on an estate in Attica on the road between Athens and Eleusis. He would abduct travellers and provide them with a very nice dinner. After the dinner was over he would place the ‘guests’ in his special bed where they would be fitted perfectly. That meant that those that were too short would be stretched while those that were too long would have their feet or legs chopped off. Taleb reminds the reader that every one of the sayings is about the same subject as, “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, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences.”
Those familiar with the themes in Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable will immediately recognize this book as a link to the previous discussions. As usual, Taleb does not spare his favourite targets and takes his shots at those that know far less than they think that they do and try to fit their limited knowledge into what they are familiar with.
Of course, Mr. Taleb’s bias may come into play in some of his pronouncements. It is easy to write, “My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill,” or, “You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits,” when you are a successful trader and author who no longer has to work for a living if you do not wish to. That said, I can argue that Mr. Taleb’s pronouncements are right on the money and far more deserving of attention than they are to receive from many readers who cannot handle the implied criticism of their own lives and choices.
My young son found one pronouncement, “my biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and legal,” to be defeatist and whiny. He thought that Taleb should have emphasised the natural rights arguments made in Antigone or even the Nuremberg trial. Bob Rubin’s actions should have been condemned by Taleb but not excused as being ‘legal’ because theft is theft even when the government says that it is acceptable.
As with his other books, I loved Taleb’s effort in this one. But that having been said, it does not mean that you, my dear reader of this review, will love it as much or at all. The best way to find out is to go to the look inside panel in Amazon and hit the, ‘Surprise Me!,’ link. Read a few of the aphorisms or to look at the Postface. You also might want to look inside his other books and see if you like the style and can handle the wit and arrogance of the author. If you choose to read this book and keep an open mind you are likely to learn many new things and see views that are very different than those that you may hold. For me and my son that was a very enjoyable journey even if it was difficult and frustrating once in a while. If you put in the effort and try to enjoy what you are reading, the rewards will be tremendous. If you do not have what it takes. If not, there are always the Robert Rubin books to read. I hear that Robert’s ghostwriters are not too bad.