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Comment by mapleoin | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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'.

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