{"id":2862,"date":"2011-01-30T02:25:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T10:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/a450d6a2c55d6d40"},"modified":"2011-01-30T11:59:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T19:59:11","slug":"the-bed-of-procrustes-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-%e2%80%93-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/the-bed-of-procrustes-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-%e2%80%93-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb \u2013 Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Shared by  JohnH<\/p>\n<p> HatTip to Dave Lull &#8211; Thanks Dave!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div style=\"float: left; padding: 15px 25px 15px 0px;\">\n<div style=\"width: 140px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"max-width: 140px; border: 1px solid #333333; margin-bottom: 5px; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" title=\"The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Random House\" src=\"http:\/\/images.suite101.com\/2739515_com_thebedofpr.jpg\" alt=\"The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Random House\" \/><\/p>\n<p><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 140px; font-size: 10px;\">The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb &#8211; <em>Random House<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"float: right; width: 435px; padding: 10px 0px 15px;\">\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; width: inherit; margin: 5px 0px;\">\n<div style=\"color: #000000; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #eeeeee;\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>I can&#8217;t tell when Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of <em>The Black Swan<\/em> and <em>Fooled by Randomness<\/em>, is serious and when he&#8217;s winking wildly in his newest book, <em>The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n<h3>The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms<\/h3>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><em>Fooled by Randomness<\/em> and <em>The Black Swan<\/em>, taken together, provide a complex view of human behavior that examines why humans make decisions and act on those decisions. The much deeper premise &#8211; that so much of what drives our experience is a function of what we do not know, rather than what we think we know &#8211; ties in with the twinned concepts of robustness and fragility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shared by  JohnH <\/p>\n<p>HatTip to Dave Lull &#8211; Thanks Dave!<\/p>\n<p>The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb &#8211; Random House<\/p>\n<p>The Bed of Procrustes is the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, but it diverges wildly from his other philosophical works. <\/p>\n<p> &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeds","category-john"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862","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=2862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2864,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2862\/revisions\/2864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}