Nassim Nicholas Taleb 
Bed of Procrustes [EPUB ebook] 
Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

In this profound and playful book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb presents his ideas about life in the form of aphorisms, the world’s earliest — and most memorable — literary form. Procrustes was a character from Greek mythology who abducted travellers and invited them to spend the night in a special bed, which they had to fit to perfection. They never did. Those who were too tall had their legs chopped off; those who were too short were stretched. Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts — we humans, facing the limits of our knowledge, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies and pre-packaged narratives. Only by embracing the unexpected — and accepting what we don’t know — can we see the world as it really is.