Taleb received a $4 million advance to write this book of aphorisms as a follow-up to the Black Swan.Some of my favorites:Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing.I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.If you kno...

Aphorisms Galore!If for any literary fan, the country Lebanon brings to mind the tender, lyrical and mystical poet Khalil Gibran, we have another compatriot from Lebanon to remember for his scathing, caustic, intelligent and often cynical observations on our society. He is none other than Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lebanese American essayist and scholar whose main works focus on problems of randomness, probability and uncertainty. His 2007 book “The Black Swan “was described in a review by Sunda...

So many aphorisms, so little time! This would make a great little coffee table book, or something to occasionally pull out and flip through. “Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.”“Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone.” “You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.”

Full of wisdom .. and egoism.

A rare book. It probably has the highest usefulness to character ratio of any book I've found. Not to say that it's super useful, but it is very short.The book is the equivalent of poring over Taleb's blog and twitter account for the past 10 years and picking out the stuff that is worth sharing. I can imagine the author's notebook that he kept witty and interesting-to-him stuff marked up, over and over, front and back of every page and margin. I think it would be interesting to read the notes an...

In his earlier books about randomness, Taleb had shown glimpses of his uncompromising attitude towards his critics and his contempt for people who had made and lost millions on the stock market. But it was mixed with all the good stuff. Unfortunately, in this book, we only see his complexes revealed.This book is unforgivable. It does contain some useful pearls of wisdom, but they are rare and surrounded by prejudices, attacks, snobbery and ignorance. The author has no sense of what happiness and...

****I averaged about two highlights per page in this weird little book of econo-philosophico-theologico-amoro-logico-legico (anti-)wisdom, and that's enough of a recommendation in itself. The author entitles the book 'Incerto 3', 'incerto' meaning the 'unpredictable' or 'random', cognate to English 'uncertain'. So, yes, the book is about as coherent as my neologized, pretend field of study invented up above. It's a book of sayings, of disjointed thoughts - some trite and some profound - on every...

This book of aphorisms is best absorbed little by little and day by day the way one would read Marcus Aurelius. Not all are going to land on each reader, but the ones that evoke thought need to be stopped and analyzed. The two that stuck with me in paraphrase are:Never hire someone that gives you more than one reason they want the job.If someone asks you how to solve a particular problem, rather than tell them how you would do it, tell them how you wouldn't do it.

probably my least favorite part of incerto, still 5/5.

I would have said it's incredibly unlikely that someone could put together a book of aphorisms during their lifetime that would be worth reading. It's probably fitting that Taleb could beat those odds. This book is theme around the myth of Procrustes--an ancient figure who would stretch or maim overnight guests so they could fit into his bed (instead of, you know, fitting the bed to them). It's kind of ironic that Taleb, coiner of the Narrative Fallacy, would put an overarching theme in a collec...

This had a few gems, but the author comes off as full of himself. He hates economists, journalists, nerds, academics, and Harvard professors. He thinks employment is slavery.

This was a book having a Postface instead of a Preface.. A beautiful book full of Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms.The story of 'The Bed of Procrustes' (a Greek myth) is metaphorized in every aphorism in this book.We humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things 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 exp...

Nassim Taleb is definitely not the sort I'd like to get to know personally as I don't agree with about half of his life philosophies. However, in my best Voltaire voice, while I disapprove of what he says, I will defend to the death his right to print it in books and make millions off them. As with such collections, there is a mix of some fantastic and deep aphorisms while there were also a few that made me go 'meh'. Overall though, once you overcome the fact that he keeps calling everyone incom...

The Bed of Procrustes was a collection of aphorisms from Taleb that should be read several times before commenting on their insights. (Unfortunately, I am presenting a review after only a single reading, so readers should take my initial review with a grain of salt) Several inserts from Taleb focus on his criticism of the study of economic, impact of modernity and religion/traditionalism. It appears that the author does not hold value in the economist or intelligence associated with its modern a...

The Bed of Procrustes is a beautiful collection of aphorisms, best absorbed if already familiar with Nassim Nicholas Taleb through some of his other books. They all touch upon uncertainty and the limitations of knowledge (and the qualities of the unknown) but this one is special. This is the treat, the one you'll want to read over and over and ponder. While there is little to ponder in Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (it is either true - hence, to be ab...

This book is different than Nassim's other books. Aphorisms with a philosophical touch. Suitable for light reading, taking you through a journey of epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics, fragility, ludic fallacy & domain dependence to the sacred & the profane, chance & probability, randomness and happiness. It revolves around an interesting theme, "The Bed of Procrustes" (Wikipedia: In Greek mythology, Procrustes or "the stretcher who hammers out the metal" was a rogue smith and bandit from...