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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>The people in the self-help section need something else. Those things (philosophy, literature, history and science) are the luxury of folks who aren't struggling with e.g. depression, abuse, drugs & alcohol, co-dependency, etc.

Actually it's the inverse. A healthy dose of philosophy, literature, history and science are what people suffering from "depression, abuse, drugs & alcohol, co-dependency" can use to liberate themselves, understand their situation, and get above it.

The rest (99% of the self help shelves) is snake oil sold by marketeers to the gullible...

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Hardly. High culture takes a level of attention that someone who is struggling in life hardly will be able to attain. Moreover, philosophy is concerned with truth, and truth can sometimes be brutal. It would be almost criminal to recommend reading Nietzsche for someone who lost their job, got cheated and divorced and has some serious disease.

Well obviously you wouldn't do Nietzche (though I think you probably could). Meditations is probably the book to read in those cases.

Look I'm not shitting on high culture.

And yes, there's a lot of snake oil out there. (Personally I hate the medallions that are supposed to protect against stray EM! And don't get me started on audiophiles.)

> The rest (99% of the self help shelves) is snake oil sold by marketeers to the gullible...

You haven't read "99% of the self help shelves" have you?

>You haven't read "99% of the self help shelves" have you?

No, but I've fully read over 30 over the years, and skimmed over 100s.

Technically speaking, you don't need to "read 99%" you just need to read a decent number, and assume a normal distribution of quality. In fact if you find out that the most celebrated/succesful are already crap, this makes it even easier.

And unlike literature, science, or deep non-fiction, actually skimming self-help books to distill the 5 solid paragraphs that they've turned into a 200+ page book is the best way of reading it. And for most books, even those 5 paragraphs are mostly platitudes.

Cheers! Well met.

Here's the thing: those cheesy books of fluffy platitudes help people.

Take Berg's "The Secret". Its exactly the kind of book you're talking about IMO: the "secret" is literally one sentence just sixteen words long. And yet thousands (millions?) of people got something from it.

Who are we to say that's so wrong?

Frankly, it's weird to me that the "self-help" genre seems to attract opprobrium.

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Did you get anything out of any of those books you read? Were any of them any good? I'm just curious.

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