On Greek Myths and General Airs of Superiority

The Bed of Procrustes. Ever heard of it? It's a Greek myth wherein Procrustes "fits" residents of his inn to his beds. It's a sort of metaphor for humans fitting worldly realities into neat little mental boxes, regardless of whether this actually makes sense or not. Besides being a myth, its also the title of a book by Nassim Taleb. He deliberately omits the point of the book for a quite apt reason: he doesn't want the reader's view clouded by some initial notion. The book is not fiction or non-fiction, an epic, full of cantos or epochs. It's a collection of pithy sayings originated in Taleb's mind. To the generous and open-minded, its a wonderful gathering of wisdom and insights from a very educated man. To the cynical its an ego trip by someone who has decided long ago that the only reason to bestow his intelligence on the mere peons surrounding him was to make them buy his book. You'd have to be pretty obtuse to claim that Taleb is not a brilliant mind. You'd have to be living under a rock not to hear him trumpet his own horn. Even for the cynics who would delight in Taleb's fund becoming the victim of a black swan in an ironic twist of fates, The Bed of Procrustes delivers. My favorite quote: 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.