Comment by tmuir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tmuir | Hacker News Reader

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I've read that Carr's business expanded to several other vices. The two I know of are alcohol abuse, and overeating. What I've read about them makes me think of the story from WWII, placing armor on areas of planes that were _not_ getting shot, instead of the areas getting shot. It is only the planes that came back to be repaired that got shot in superficial locations. Others got shot where it counted, but couldn't report that information. It is the misuse of a heuristic long enough to reinforce that heuristic as "proper".

I've read reviews about the alcohol techniques and the dietary techniques as being nothing more than "just stop drinking" and "just become a vegetarian". But I've also read reviews of the very same books that the sound like the reader had the same experience I did with quitting smoking.

So maybe the bad reviews are just the people who the concepts didn't make sense to, and just like every other person who has ever come along to get them to stop this behavior, they shut down and clung to the addiction's false security, rather than be berated and belittled as a brainwashed zombie who has made an incredibly long chain of terrible mistakes to the point they have stockholm syndrome.

The good reviews are people the concepts did resonate with, as evidenced by their elation due to not paying for the opportunity to kill themselves any faster than absolutely necessary.

Ya for me that book didn't resonate at all. I thought it was a piece of trash and don't understand how anyone could actually go in without some skepticism about the shit he's feeding you. I still vape, have to wear a nicotine patch at work to focus, etc, so obviously my attitude toward that book was the problem. IMO it's just a bunch of drivel but if people read it and believe it they swear it to be true. To be clear, I'm not knocking the book but just highlighting how my attitude differs and accentuating that to state that attitude and willingness are probably a big part of the success. vapes with cynical expression

Carr specifically addresses this point in the book. He said that he was hurt to find out that after he'd published his book, and gave signed copies to friends, in the hope they would quit, many of his friends never even started the book. One of them finally admitted to him that they knew if they finished the book, they'd have to quit. So to prevent that, they just never started the book.

He also approaches the subject from the angle of timing, and that stressful periods may be more difficult, because stress is one of the triggers. Or at least we convince our selves it removes stress.

So I 100% agree that just like learning anything else you have to be willing to hear the information and process it without just dismissing it out of hand. Somewhat related is the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.

I totally went in with tons of skepticism. Here's some huckster telling me theres a secret way. Yeah, ok. But I guess after reading enough of it, I started to realize that I had become really good at coming up with excuses, and that skill was being used against me to keep smoking. In my view, he made a persuasive argument, and wasn't trying to sell me more shit. By the time I finished the book, I was completely convinced that he was correct, even though I had not yet had my last cigarette.

I also read the book over two days, so I really got the whole message in a short amount of time, as opposed to reading a page or two a day for six months.

The super concise summary: quitting is hard MOSTLY because you think it is hard. The rest of the book is just examples of that fact. This may not be true for everyone, but it certainly turned out to be true for me. But it's not something easily conveyed through words. I suspect this book is effective only for people who are ready to quit, but needed that external trigger prompting them to do so.

Hope you quit soon. Life isn't all rosy on the other side, but it feels a hell of a lot more real.

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