The Bed of Procrustes
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb · first published 2010
32% recommend59% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
Collection of short aphorisms and standalone observations on risk, uncertainty and decision-making, condensing ideas from Taleb's longer books; readers who already know his work find it a handy digest to reread.
Common criticism: Some find the sharp jabs at critics distracting and the thoughts uneven in quality.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses 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.
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…motohagiography (word-depipction-of-saints?), and until 2-3 weeks ago I am ashamed to say I didn't even know who that was: Nassim Nicholas Taleb. [0-3]: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes
on “How to increase your luck surface area (2010)” ↗…feel like it Edit: on second thought, don't. It probably won't help me overcome any of my personal rationalizations or bring me any closer to my goals. But I have a recommendation. Read Nassim Taleb's Bed of Procrustes.
on “On Depression & Getting Help” ↗…translation/editing) - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) by Neal Stephenson - The Invisibles by Grant Morrison - Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Iron John by Robert Bly - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman - Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges - 100 Years of Solitude…
on “Ask HN: What books fundamentally changed the way you think about the world?” ↗Lessons of History Letters to a Young Poet Letters from a Self Made Merchant to His Son Sections of Meditations Sections of Seneca Bed of Procrustes
on “Ask HN: Book under 100 pages that changed your life the most?” ↗The Bed of Procrustes is great too, and easy to reread as a summary of the other books once you've already read them a few times individually. Taleb also wrote a forward to the recent edition of Cipolla's The Basic Laws of…
on “Ask HN: What books have been worth your time?” ↗> At one point he was planning to publish a book of his own aphorisms, as quoted by himself, while he is still alive. He did, it's called "The Bed of Procrustes". I quite enjoyed it, there's quite a few brilliant thoughts there, even though they're sprinkled between countless cheap shots against his enemies.
on “What Nassim Taleb can teach us” ↗…finished/absorbed the material. No pain, no gain I suppose! Antifragile: https://medium.com/thinking-is-hard/live-like-a-hydra-c02337... Fooled by Randomness: https://www.fs.blog/2015/02/fooled-by-randomness/ The Bed of Procrustes: https://twitter.com/nntaleb (I've not read Black Swan so cannot offer any recommendations)
on “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)” ↗These excerpts from the The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb resonated with me and I think it applies here. “You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the…
on “I need to stop being boring” ↗…investment banker, journalist, or mid-level corporate executive? All of the upside, none of the risk! It feels "rational" in a way to want to have no skin in the game. It was Taleb himself who said in the bed of Procrustes (another of his books) something like, "it's the sign of the loser to lament human nature without any attempt to exploit or profit from it". Does that apply here? Another thought: is reputationism inevitable?…
on “Inequality and Skin in the Game” ↗…Cialdini Guns, Germs and steel - Jared Diamond Poor Charlie's Almanack - Charlie Munger - 2nd reading Andrew Carnegie's Biography - Joseph Frazier Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb - 2nd reading Bed of Procrustes - Nassim Taleb Never Split the Difference - Christopher Voss The intelligent investor - Benjamin Graham Autobiography - Benjamin Franklin I always remember this quote: "In my whole life, I have known…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?” ↗…from Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell "Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing." from The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
on “How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company” ↗…writing process. The quality of de Botton's writing really speaks for itself. It must be difficult work in itself because even Taleb, when he took a stab at this 'pseudo-philosophy' genre with his book The Bed of Procrustes, managed to produce absolute piffle which would never have been published if Taleb weren't already famous for his popular finance books. There seems to be an underlying presumption that writing is not…
on “Read Fewer Books” ↗…no guarantee. And in any case... “They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
on “Less Than 7 Percent of US Active Equity Funds Have Beat the Market Past Decade” ↗…selling. “The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality—without exploiting them for fun and profit.” - Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes
on “"We'll call it AI to sell it, Machine Learning to Build it"” ↗"To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's." -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Bed of Procrustes"
on “The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)” ↗