Against Advice | Hacker News Reader

Against Advice

thepointmag.com

28 pointsandrewnc16 comments

Additionally, advice between peers, advice that doesn't come from the master to the student, and I think this is the most common sort of advice, life-advice, or "how to live" advice, is always patronizing. There's an implicit assumption (and lie) that the other person knows better, taken to its extreme, it means the other person can think, you can't think; the other person knows what's good, you don't know what's good; the other person has the motivation, you don't have the motivation. Sure, the advice giver "means well" so they can't be faulted, the receiver has to appreciate the advice no matter how useless and the advice giver never has any responsibility, certainly not the responsibility of any consequences of their advice, that's always the receiver's responsibility.

That's only true if you're willing to entirely discount the intent of the sender, and the perception of receiver.

There's a stark difference between giving clearly unsolicited advice, and giving advice because the other person asks for advice.

Then there's the grey area where you have to rely on non-verbal and implicit communication because it's unclear whether any advice given will be perceived as presumptuous or as pure gold. This is the murky area of human interaction where intuition matters more and formal rules don't always apply.

There have been times when I resisted advice given to me. Only to understand some time later that the advice given was really helpful and true, and ending up grateful for having that person not holding back on me.

You can phrase useful advice in a "non-advicy" way. E.g. "here is how I do it..." instead of "it's better to do it this way/you should do it like this". This form sends an implicit message "there may be other, maybe better, ways to do it/YMMV".

The phrasing indicates whether the sender thinks of themselves as someone who has all the answers vs someone who just found out that something works for them.

Be careful with this, too. When somebody brings up problems they’re having, they often just want the catharsis of complaining and empathy about their situation. Proffering a solution, even couched as you have described, can change the conversation dynamic from empathy to a semi-combative back-and-forth which serves no-one’s purpose.

When sharing an advice, I phrase it with an emphasis on my person, such as: "in situation X, I personally do Y", or "something that works for me is X".

It can still be an advice, in the sense that I may be sharing some lessons learnt, but without the patronizing tone that you describe (which I also find really annoying to deal with).

Are you giving advice not to give advice?

are you posing your counter-advice as a question in an attempt to fly it under the radar ?

Asking for clarification is not giving 'counter-advice'...which isn't a thing, unless you meant to say 'add rigour'.

I suggest a good way to “give advice” is Socratic. Listen. Have them describe their views. Ask clarifying questions.

Even if you have the best advice in the world, it’ll be useless if it’s not what the listener needs to hear at that moment.

Might be better to just help them better understand their current perspectives and options. Then they’ll be more open to finding solutions themselves.

I've noticed good therapists do this.

When I was in therapy, my therapist would just continually ask questions. And eventually, Id start answering them, and find the answer that I was looking for. It was really amazing.

Now all of my advice is in this way. People already have an idea of what the problem is. Sometimes they don't want to admit it, or face it. But when they talk through it, it's enlightening.

The Socratic Method isn't open-ended inquiry into clarification -- it's a patronizing technique of argument -- as from teacher to student.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

Socrates' interlocutor asserts a thesis, for example "Courage is endurance of the soul".

Socrates decides whether the thesis is false and targets for refutation.

Socrates secures his interlocutor's agreement to further premises, for example "Courage is a fine thing" and "Ignorant endurance is not a fine thing".

Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, these further premises imply the contrary of the original thesis; in this case, it leads to: "courage is not endurance of the soul".

Socrates then claims he has shown his interlocutor's thesis is false and its negation is true.

Giving advice is like trying to inject lines of code in a neural network instead of giving training examples to it. Nothing good is going happen. I prefer to share experiences and let people to do whatever they want with that information

This reminds me of a story I heard from Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway about asking Mozart for advice.

One man came to Mozart and asked him how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, “You are too young to write a symphony.” The man said, “You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years of age, and I am 21.” Mozart said, “Yes, but I didn’t run around asking people how to do it.”

I've completely given up on giving advice and persuading people because it doesn't work and often people do the opposite. People are going to do what they want anyway. Doesn't stop me having my opinions though.

I don't remember where I read it, but someone once said that the two things that hurt the most are criticism and unsolicited advice.

Exactly. It can be an ego-damaging exercise to another person to give unsolicited advice, so usually before I give it (online) I add a mini disclaimer like 'IMHO', or 'You might want to hear my thoughts on the matter'.

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