I can't tell when Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, is serious and when he's winking wildly in his newest book, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms. My bemused and befuddled response to the book is either a testament to my insight or ignorance. I freely throw my hands up in the air and declare that I do not know which it is.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Taleb is a modern philosopher mislabelled as a finance guru by the mainstream media. His insights into finance are well established in his earlier books, but any writer or reporter who narrowly defines Taleb in this fashion misses the point.
Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, taken together, provide a complex view of human behavior that examines why humans make decisions and act on those decisions. The much deeper premise - that so much of what drives our experience is a function of what we do not know, rather than what we think we know - ties in with the twinned concepts of robustness and fragility.
If we accept that black swans - unexpected, rapid-acting, paradigm-changing events that force societies (or sub-sectors, depending on the event) to reboot - are beyond our ability to predict and control, then we can begin to work to be less fragile and more robust. Both of Taleb's older works delve into his personal experience, how he developed his theories, examples of failure in societies to prepare for black swans, and how humans easily transform luck into skill, when randomness truly should take the credit.
Aphorisms or Koans? Nassim Nicholas Taleb as Philosopher
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms is a slim hardback, with a little more than 100 pages of aphorisms and a brief Postface. Many of the statements are interesting, some amusing, but most are piercing, like this one, which applies directly to most book reviews: "You exist in full if and only if your conversations (or writings) cannot be easily reconstructed with clips from other conversations." (41)
Now, what's a professional book reviewer to do with that statement?
Taleb's writings in this book are as likely to be a deep thought with ethical resonance as they are a witty social commentary, and it is hard to tell the difference.
- On success: "My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill." (37)
- On social media: "Social networks present information about what people like; more informative if, instead, they described what they don't like." (36) Who hasn't wished for an "Unlike" button on Facebook?
- On robustness: "Robustness is progress without impatience." (71)
- On academics: "Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful." (72) *
If there's a unifying thread through the book it's the fragility-robustness commentary, but even that theme is a loose construct. Taleb discusses carbohydrates, the difference between scholars and academics, forecasting and prophecy, and epistemic infinity with reverence and wit, but disdain for economists provides some of the most amusing critique: "The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist." (90)
The Procrustean Bed
"The Bed of Procrustes" refers to a Greek myth in which Procrustes, an estate owner, hosted travellers and offered them a bed for the night. The bed was a "perfect fit" for each traveller; Procrustes tied the traveller to the iron bed and if the person was too short, stretched him on a rack. Too tall? Feet were chopped off. The myth applies to the arrogance of knowledge and hindsight, of denial and forcing facts (and people) to conform to a rigid set of assumptions.
Taleb notes in the Postface: "Look around at the Procrustean beds we've created, some beneficial, some more questionable: regulations, top-down governments, academia, gyms, commutes, high-rise office buildings, involuntary human relationships, employment, etc." (107)
As I made my way through The Bed of Procrustes I had to stop repeatedly to think about the aphorism I'd just read, to research details at times on various figures mentioned, and to consider the layers and meanings one sentence could hold. I reached the end wanting more.
The only way to close this review of The Bed of Procrustes is with this aphorism: "Critics may appear to blame the author for not writing the book they wanted to read; but in truth they are blaming him for writing the book they wanted, but were unable, to write." (44)
How much time do you have to kill pondering that?
To Buy the Book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms:
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms. Random House, 2010.
* I hope this review has been of no use whatsoever to my readers.
Melanie Zoltan - Melanie Zoltan is a former college professor and administrator who has written for About.com, PCWorld, Brain Child, Thomson Gale, and ...
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