The Bed of Procrustes

《黑天鹅》作者塔勒布用最出人意料的方式表达了他对这个荒谬世界的看法。

现代文明在给人类生活带来便利的同时，也产生了不少负面效应——它惯于通过改变人来适应科技，责怪现实不符合经济学模型，为了推销药品而发明新的疾病，把智力定义为可以在教室里考核的东西，说服人们相信雇佣并不是奴役。

本书认为，智慧的每一次失败，都可以归结为削足适履的结果。作者在书中入木三分地分析了你所处世界的随机本质，道破人们视而不见的思维陷阱。

本书汇集了塔勒布深入洞察生活的格言，轻松活泼，毫不刻板，但却能让你大吃一惊，因为它揭示出你其实无意识地生活在错觉之中。凭借尖锐的才思和深远的智慧，塔勒布为我们剖析了这些错觉的本质，倡导用勇气、优雅和博学等经典价值观来抵抗庸俗和虚伪等现代病态。

By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect.

The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects – modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery.

Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.