{"id":2463,"date":"2010-11-16T21:04:30","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T05:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/5b73f4db5cb1577b"},"modified":"2010-11-16T23:30:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-17T07:30:16","slug":"%e2%80%98the-bed-of-procrustes%e2%80%99-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/%e2%80%98the-bed-of-procrustes%e2%80%99-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-nytimes-com\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Bed of Procrustes\u2019 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb &#8211; NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Shared by  JohnH<br \/>\n<br \/>\nNY Times reviews The Bed of Procrustes. HatTip to Dave Lull<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2010\/11\/17\/arts\/BOOK\/BOOK-articleInline.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"227\"><br \/>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<h6>Sarah Josephine Taleb<\/h6>\n<p>Nassim Nicholas Taleb                            <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h4>\n<p>\nTHE BED OF PROCRUSTES\n<\/p>\n<\/h4>\n<h5>\n<p>\nPhilosophical and Practical Aphorisms\n<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>\nBy Nassim Nicholas Taleb\n<\/p>\n<p>\n112 pages. Random House. $18.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h3>Related<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<h6><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/22\/books\/review\/Easterbrook.t.html?ref=books\"><br \/>\nSunday Book Review: \u2018The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable\u2019 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/a><br \/>\n(April 22, 2007)<br \/>\n<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>\nThat said, it is extremely foolhardy to try to paraphrase any of Mr. Taleb\u2019s pronouncements. This is a man who suffers fools impatiently, and his intellect makes his hauteur largely justified. Watch any <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ABXPICWjFIo\" title=\"a television appearance by Mr. Taleb\">video clip<\/a>  in which he is being interviewed \u2014 or, worse, has to keep quiet while someone else tries and fails to understand whatever he has just said \u2014 if you need convincing.        <\/p>\n<p>\nNo readers of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/22\/books\/review\/Easterbrook.t.html?scp=5&amp;sq=nassim%20taleb&amp;st=cse\" title=\"New York Times review of \u201cThe Black Swan\u201c\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/22\/books\/review\/Easterbrook.t.html?scp=5&amp;sq=nassim%20taleb&amp;st=cse\" title=\"New York Times review of \u201cThe Black Swan\u201c\">\u201cThe Black Swan,\u201d<\/a> \u201cFooled by Randomness\u201d or any of Mr. Taleb\u2019s academic writings about economics, probability, risk, fragility, philosophy of statistics, applied epistemology, etc., will question whether he is qualified to dish out wisdom. And none will be surprised that Mr. Taleb, unlike the inspirational writer he calls \u201cmy compatriot from a neighboring (and warring) village in northern Lebanon, Kahlil Gibran, author of \u2018The Prophet,\u2019\u00a0\u201d  can be blistering. His observations concern superiority, wealth, suckerdom, academia, modernity, technology and the all-purpose, ignorant \u201cthey\u201d who dare to doubt him.        <\/p>\n<p>\nEven his book\u2019s title, \u201cThe Bed of Procrustes,\u201d is intentionally harsh. As he reminds readers in a brief introduction, the Procrustes of Greek mythology was the cruel and ill-advised fool who  stretched or shortened people to make them fit his inflexible bed. Mr. Taleb\u2019s new book addresses the latter-day ways in which \u201cwe 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.\u201d        <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shared by  JohnH <\/p>\n<p>NY Times reviews The Bed of Procrustes. HatTip to Dave Lull<\/p>\n<p>Sarah Josephine Taleb<br \/>\nNassim Nicholas Taleb                            <\/p>\n<p>THE BED OF PROCRUSTES<\/p>\n<p>Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms<\/p>\n<p>By Nassim Nicholas Taleb<br \/>\n&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2464,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2463\/revisions\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}