50 Quotes From 'The Bed of Procrustes'
A book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Bed of Procrustes (by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, currently on its 2nd edition) is a book I keep coming back to over and over. It’s one of the very few books I’ve read that gave me an entirely new lens for looking at the world with.
Since I refer to it so much, I figured that it would be worthwhile to write up some of my favorite aphorisms from it here.
Go ahead and buy the full book if these quotes resonate. In a way, I view it as a kind of soft introduction to the Incerto (of which it is book 3) — Taleb’s multi-volume essay on decision-making under uncertainty.
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
Your brain is most intelligent when you don’t instruct it on what to do—something people who take showers discover on occasion.
If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead—the more precision, the more dead you are.
Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
Erudition without bullshit, intellect without cowardice, courage without imprudence, mathematics without nerdiness, scholarship without academia, intelligence without shrewdness, religiosity without intolerance, elegance without softness, sociality without dependence, enjoyment without addiction, religion without tolerance, and, above all, nothing without skin in the game.
Nothing is more permanent than “temporary” arrangements, deficits, truces, and relationships; and nothing is more temporary than “permanent” ones.
In your prayers substitute “Protect us from evil” with “Protect us from those who improve things for a salary.”
A salary doesn’t have to be paid in cash. Social currency is, after all, a currency.
By praising someone for his lack of defects you are also implying his lack of virtues.
Life is about execution rather than purpose.
If you get easily bored, it means that your BS detector is functioning properly; if you forget (some) things, it means that your mind knows how to filter; and if you feel sadness, it means that you are human.
The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain why you did something.
If you can’t spontaneously detect (without analyzing) the difference between sacred and profane, you’ll never know what religion means. You will also never figure out what we commonly call art. You will never understand anything.
Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.
Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty. A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
This aphorism is a restatement of the Lindy effect — the longer something non-perishable has existed, the longer it will continue to exist. Survival is an indicator of robustness.
Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.
The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
It is as difficult to change someone’s opinions as it is to change his tastes.
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
They are born, then put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box to sit in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes, Euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes.
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
I wonder if a lion (or a cannibal) would pay a high premium for free-range humans.
A good book gets better on the second reading. A great book on the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.
More of Taleb’s advice on reading.
Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more “efficient.”
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families.
Technology is at its best when it is invisible.
Echoes of Thiel’s definition of technology as “doing more with less”. Also relates to Bret Victor’s talks on technology enabling tighter feedback loops between the creator and his creation.
You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.
You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
True love is the complete victory of the particular over the general, and the unconditional over the conditional.
Unless we manipulate our surroundings, we have as little control over what and whom we think about as we do over the muscles of our hearts.
Environment is underrated!
If you find any reason why you and someone are friends, you are not friends.
Supposedly, if you are uncompromising or intolerant with BS you lose friends. But you will also make friends, better friends.
Another marker for charlatans: they don’t voice opinions that can get them in trouble.
Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
Your duty is to scream those truths that one should shout but that are merely whispered.
Any action one takes with the aim of winning an award, any award, corrupts to the core.
To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
You are only secure if you can lose your fortune without the additional worse insult of having to become humble.
It is easier to macrobullshit than to microbullshit.
Being an entrepreneur is an existential not just a financial thing.
It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.
The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
Contra the prevailing belief, “success” isn’t being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies.
You are free in inverse proportion to the number of people to whom you can’t say “fuck you”. But you are honorable in proportion to the number of people to whom you can say “fuck you” with impunity but don’t.
I never trust a man who doesn’t have enemies.
Marriage is the institutional process of feminizing men—and feminizing women.
An enemy who becomes a friend will stay a friend; a friend turned enemy will never become one.
When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they just call you arrogant.
If you liked what you just read,
You can find more quotes & 'gems' from Taleb at his twitter account or if you are not follower @nntalebbot.
Thanks! There is too much here that I strongly agree with for me to continue ignoring Taleb. Though, personally, I still wonder if his books are worth to be reread. ;)