Myth I’m considering in modern-day circumstances
- by Tim Ferris on 5-Bullet Friday — February 18, 2022
A Procrustean bed: “Something designed to produce conformity by unnatural or violent means. In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a robber who tied his victims to a bed, either stretching or cutting off their legs in order to make them fit it.” (Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms). Nassim Taleb (@nntaleb) has a related book of aphorisms titled The Bed of Procrustes. He explains the title thusly: “Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts—we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences.” For more, see this animated YouTube video: The Bed of Procrustes.