Taleb answered 10 questions for TIME magazine, and I found myself intrigued. This seemed to be a jumping point for me to try to expand my reading horizons, so to speak, and I immediately went to the bookstore and read this. I was disappointed that there wasn't a history of Procrustes. I was also disappointed that the chapter entitled "Matters Ontological" was only one page. Here are some of the aphorisms that struck a chord with me....and I think this would be a fantastic book for discussion. If you've read it, let me know.
"Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry."
"Conscious ignorance, if you practice it, expands your world; it can make things infinite."
"Love without sacrifice is like theft."
"Corollary to Moore's Law: every ten years, collective wisdom degrades by half."
"You exist in full if and only if your conversation (or writing) cannot easily be reconstructed with clips from other conversations."
"People are so prone to overcausation that you can make the reticent turn loquacious by dropping an occassional 'Why?' in the conversation."
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