Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the The Black Swan, former options trader, and someone who may end up this generation’s Dr.Johnson, if only for his ability to virulently and consistently upend the disingenuous, has a new book of aphorisms I’m keen to examine: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms. Taleb is often credited with the common sense warning of not trusting narrative complexity or naively believing in determinateness. He sometimes seems a buoyant Cassandra, with the training and the articulation of someone who knows how financial analysis and trading is really done; namely, by instinct and public choice. Here he is on the Economist speaking a little more fluidly on “anti-fragility” and later on Bloomberg TV is full defiance.