My good friend, A recommended that I read Nassim Taleb's Antifragile. And I made an effort because A is prodigiously well-read and I value his recommendations. But this one was very hard for me to read or like. I fared better with his The Bed of Procrustes. It was a nice and easy read for a good bit until I started to feel saturated and patronized by the author.
Both books made me ask the question "And so what is the point ?" It seems like Taleb invited the reader to a Barmecide feast that was also an endless one. Instead of seven or ten courses this one has an infinity of them. Every dish is a work of art, described in meticulous detail. You can almost taste it but only almost because it is not real. You leave hungry and frustrated at some point but the feast is still being laid out in ether.
With both books I felt like I came into contact with something smart and potentially informative but I clearly did not have the wits to get the point or any value from my readings. It is not often a book has left me in this state of mind. The only wisdom I was able to glean from Antifragile was "The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference."
I see some practical value to that one. The rest was well above my paygrade. It seems a person must take an IQ test before attempting to read this book with the aim of understanding any of it. I am not sure what the cut-off is but I clearly did not make it.
Both books made me ask the question "And so what is the point ?" It seems like Taleb invited the reader to a Barmecide feast that was also an endless one. Instead of seven or ten courses this one has an infinity of them. Every dish is a work of art, described in meticulous detail. You can almost taste it but only almost because it is not real. You leave hungry and frustrated at some point but the feast is still being laid out in ether.
With both books I felt like I came into contact with something smart and potentially informative but I clearly did not have the wits to get the point or any value from my readings. It is not often a book has left me in this state of mind. The only wisdom I was able to glean from Antifragile was "The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference."
I see some practical value to that one. The rest was well above my paygrade. It seems a person must take an IQ test before attempting to read this book with the aim of understanding any of it. I am not sure what the cut-off is but I clearly did not make it.
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