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Comment by gursikh | Hacker News Reader

Every Tim Ferris thread I see on HN, has nigh 10 - 20 posts that all essentially say:

"Tim Ferris is a charlatan. He's relies on spin and marketing to sell his products. His methods encourage people to be lazy and not make a genuine effort to reach their goals. His advice is counterproductive."

But while Tim makes every effort to support his claims using facts, anecdotes and citations these sorts of comments are rarely supported by anything other than the commenter's opinion. I'm not saying people shouldn't post Tim-hating comments, to the contrary I'm asking for Tim-haters to form a strong argument against his ideology by citing studies and literature that clearly contradict what he preaches.

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Exactly.

And when he's talking about winning the martial arts fights, he goal was to "WIN", not to play the game. And like gursikh says, either put up or shut up. We need concrete examples!

Overall, I think Tim has done a lot for a lot of people with the ideas that he shares in his books.

Exploiting rule loopholes in obscure Chinese kickboxing events doesn't constitute much of a "WIN", especially with his subsequent presentation of himself as a "world champion" and "experienced mixed martial artist".

All up, a call for "concrete examples" is exactly what should be going on. From Tim. Not from the unbeliever. The cliche is "the onus of proof is on the believer". Tim's extraordinary claims about drug-free muscle gain, for example, should have had a third-party drug test involved as well as being put in context with his previous and subsequent physique. His extraordinary claims to be a martial arts champion should come with names, dates and number of competitors in his division. Etc.

You have misunderstood me. It doesn't matter if Tim is wrong, if we don't know what is right. If you substantiate your criticisms by finding counter-evidence or disputing his evidence, you add value to the conversation by pointing people in the right direction.

I don't have to find counter-evidence. I just have to ask HIM to show evidence of his extraordinary claims. Arguably, by pointing out how vague his actual evidence is (and putting it in context, e.g. 'world martial arts champion' == 'successful exploiter of loopholes in an obscure Chinese kickboxing event') I'm sort of doing what you say, but the claim that Ferriss should be taken seriously until comprehensively debunked is rubbish. Who has time to wander around debunking every semi-popular crackpot on the web?

All I know is that when Ferriss's claims intersect stuff that I know about I can tell he's full of it. This doesn't raise my level of faith about anything else.

If he doesn't feel that as a wholly empty accomplishment, he must be a sociopath.

He didn't prove his ability to fight was superior. He didn't prove his mastery of martial arts was superior. He proved his ability to push his opponent over the line.

If there were no line, he'd be crushed.

Nope, his ability to fight _was_ superior. He used every advantage possible while staying within the rules of the game. That's how competitive games are played.

Perhaps, but only in a fleeting "I'm the reason they patched that map exploit in 4.01" sort of way." Exploiting a one-time temporary imbalance in a game system doesn't make you a lifelong great player. As an illustration, who's the more respected NBA champion, Kevin Garnett or Kobe Bryant?

I have a lot more respect for something like Doug Lenat winning a 1981 Traveller (pencil & paper RPG) Trillion Credit Squadron space navy warfare competition by using an AI program to come up with a strategy that followed the rules but was totally unlike what anyone else was doing: building massive numbers of small, cheap, individually weak, disposable/suicidal ships, rather than designing a smaller traditional fleet of big, expensive, powerful capital ships.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14095

For one thing, the strategy he came up with is not unlike the use of suicide bombers in real life conflicts. I expect something similar will apply when large numbers of small, cheap autonomous drones start being deployed. It has real-world applicability. It was also effective, I believe, in EVE Online. Plus, it was an interesting application of technology. It wasn't just "shoving".

By comparison, Ferris' shoving tactic is virtually useless outside of the context of a ring-based martial art competition. (Maybe if you got in a fight on the edge of a cliff, or on the roof of a building, or next to a pool of sharks...)

I'm not say the way he did the martial arts thing is the way to go. Personally, I wouldn't be able to pull it off because I don't think I would be able to face the other players and not feel bad about what I was doing.

But, by his definition, and by those set up by that martial arts sport, he did win, and he got the title/paper to prove it. What can you say, some people like titles/papers more than the actual process :)

"every effort to support his claims using facts, anecdotes and citations"

Has anyone ever bothered to verify those facts and citations? I mean, do his sources actually support his claims?

I ask because it's not unheard of for a mass-market work to include lots of citations allegedly in support of points made in the text, but when tracked down, actually contradict the author's points.

eg: Ann Coulter, http://mediamatters.org/research/200608070002

Most of the time nobody bothers to check. Reviews will mention "19 pages of footnotes" or similar to suggest the author's arguments are well-founded. But sometimes the footnotes are just a smokescreen.

If Ferris cites scientific papers, are they in credible journals? Have they held up? Do his sources actually support the claims? I dunno. I was wondering if anyone had checked.

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