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Comment by kashyapc | Hacker News Reader

I hope more people will see what you're saying.

Newport (the "author" of the above fluff piece) himself is no slouch either. He implements the same Ferris modus operandi you describe. As I noted it more than two years ago here[1][2], he has been on a multi-book contract on the same theme with minor tweaks. So Newport will drum up attention about them in all subtle ways possible. Same story with the intolerable Ryan Holiday -- he repackages the Greek/Roman originals into breathless "books".

The alternative to the empty books by the above people is to read the original classics, and the actual scholars who did the work (Csikszentmihalyi, Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Timothy Wilson and many others).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082125

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19047303

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Yes, thank you! I'm glad that there are other people out there with the same opinion.

Every Cal Newport article is riddled with links. Links to his podcast. Links to his books. Links to his fucking newsletter, and old posts and time block planner and on and on. Ridiculous from a self professed authority on deep work and focus.

Ryan Holiday meanwhile is the classic American success story isn't he? A sort of Ray Kroc-like entity. The kind of gold-rush chasing huckster in a sea of other hucksters, all alike, but one who just happened to make it big. Nothing about Holiday suggests to me that he's had a single original thougt in his life. Just repackaging with lipstick.

I'll be sure to check out your recommendations.

ETA: Ahh fuck it. Feel like ranting more. Maciej Ceglowski famously called Newport's and Holiday's style books "wooly business books" at airports (Lexus and the Olive Tree). Things that should be blogposts, or better still, an animated dinner party conversation, but are instead padded on and on with plodding, insufferable writing lacking any clarity of thought or lucidity in expression. Gah!

ETA2: Also Maciej: Ferriss is the author of the Four Hour Workweek, the Four Hour Body, the Four Hour Orgasm. Basically if you can't do it in four hours Tim Ferriss doesn't want to talk to you.

This is getting so annoying also with books.

So many authors reference their Podcast, they want you to download a PDF on their website and so on.

I just want to read a book and start go to a f*ing website.

Downloading these PDFs somehow magically requires an email address too. I'm no great front end engineer but I have a feeling download doesn't need contact info to make the protocol work...

Your rant is spot on. Unfortunately, a lot of people (even the "sophisticated" ones) are falling for the tactics of these dodgy fellows.

I just hope people make a little bit more time when picking books to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Except, of course, that Kahneman-style behavioral economics is only slightly more likely to be true than The Secret. Hardly any of it replicates.

Do you have any source on this? Im interested in reading about reproducibility of pshychological experiments.

See this recent article that was discussed here: https://replicationindex.com/category/kahneman/

I forgot to add the caveat -- I don't mean to say just gobble up whatever the said researchers wrote. Read them with a healthy dose of skepticism. Especially all the psychology and "behavioural economics" books.

Yes, some of Kahneman's work doesn't replicate, as he himself admitted. But he's not a "hack". An incredibly hard worker, and an equally fallible human like the rest of us.

I wouldn't give Kahnemann that much credit.

From Thinking, Fast and Slow:

> The idea you should focus on, however, is that disbelief is not an option. The results are not made up, nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true.

These sentences alone put Kahnemann at bottom of the list of people anyone should listen to. This is the opposite of how you do science especially when we talk new research in something as difficult to measure as human behaviour. Not surprisingly, a lot of the studies in Thinking, Fast and Slow don't replicate.

Kahneman has acknowledged this and admitted it was a mistake[1] while simultaneously saying:

> I am still attached to every study that I cited, and have not unbelieved them

And the book is still sold with the paragraph saying that disbelief is not an option.

[1] https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...

I have seen that retraction comment when it came out, and I've quoted it myself here several times over the years. That said, you are being overly harsh. "Bottom of the list"? Give him a break.

I'm no Kahneman "defender", but you have to read any of this kind of behaviour research as "advanced opinion pieces" by biased humans.

And also bear in mind: it is a 40-year synthesis of his and Tversky's work. Yes, priming-related studies and a few others don't replicate. And that "disbelief is not an option" is of course terribly distasteful and overconfident. That doesn't mean everything in that book is bunkum!

Gets worse: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/memento-mori

Just waiting for an NFT drop now.

> The alternative to the empty books by the above people is to read the original classics, and the actual scholars who did the work (Csikszentmihalyi, Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Timothy Wilson and many others).

Okay.

What are some your recommended reads from Csikszentmihalyi, Wilson, or Thaler [1], and why? I am part way through Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahnemann, and it's both more idea-filled and harder to read than a Tim Ferriss book – which I agree is good.

----------------------------------------

[1] As an attempt to prove good intent, here are some guesses based on Googling: Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, Misbehaving and Nudge by Thaler, and Strangers to Ourselves by Wilson.

(Excuse the length; formatted it for readability.)

Your guesses are all good (and by "classics" I meant the works of Seneca, Cicero et al). You'll also find many gems in the bibliography section of any book with real substance. A good author will share their sources. On why I recommend these: Many of these researchers spent years grappling with the said topics. They are "invested" in it, and to be charitable, were/are trying to arrive at truth, however imperfectly. Even when they get things wrong, these books are more likely to make us think than the vapid "books" by charlatans.

On Thinking, Fast and slow being hard to read: it is a hard read. For Pete's sake, the book asks you to grapple with probabilities, which we humans are terrible at. If you're trying to read Prospect Theory (a key idea from the book) in bed when tired, or in a noisy train station, you will be frustrated. Read it when you are fresh and are able to concentrate well.

Note though, none of these books are "perfect"; there will be things in them that might irritate you. Read them anyway, for the mental nourishment they provide.

                 * * *

More broadly, if you're interested in psychology, primate behaviour, neuroscience, philosophy, game theory, and linguistics, here are a selection of books that I've found helpful:

• Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio

• Neuroscience: Exploring the brain by Bear, Connors, and Paradiso (this is a fantastic illustrated text book with great explanations; fully worth the 72 euros I paid for it)

• Behave and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Sapolsky (I wrote my "why" for Behave here[1])

• Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene

• The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod

• Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal

• Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga

• Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

• Becoming Human by Michael Tomasello

• For Stoicism, I wrote a detailed guide here[2] on good quality English translations by foremost scholars

• Not least of all, read some of Plato's dialogues—they're immensely fun, even if you don't agree with anything he says. Here's[3] a few recommended English translations.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559890

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559890

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440236

Thank you for your detailed answer with recommendations!

Oops, I repeated the first URL twice. I meant to link to the following one for the Stoicism guide/deep-dive:

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990579

Consider that reading your post gives a similar rush as a popular book by Ryan Holliday. Most won't read old books just because they read your post. You're doing the same thing. It's fun to rant, but like most topical rants, the speaker is contributing to the problem in some way.

I took the time to write constructive recommendations of people who have spent decades thinking about the said topics. Most of these books have stood the test of time.

Your comment and comparison doesn't make sense. If you do your research, you might grasp it better. But what I wrote is plain and clear as it is. (And judging by the off-thread responses I've gotten, many people appreciated it as I intended.)

Sure, that’s fine. It’s just the same thing Ryan Holliday et al are doing, in comment form. So the ranting is ironic. It makes sense you would receive a proportionate amount of appreciation as well relative to Holliday’s popularizations.

Assuming someone who points this out hasn’t read the thread, done research or read many of the same books feels good, I’m sure.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. [...] Please don't post shallow dismissals."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I've read the guidelines before and would consider posting this link without comment to be the only shallow dismissal in this thread. I've been careful to stick to the matter. Again, I will clarify that there is merit to popularizing serious reading or classics. Just not in ranting against popularizing classics while doing so. I sincerely think you'll come around on this as you accumulate more reading and teaching.

I recently bought "Courage is calling", the newest book from Ryan Holiday. I actually quite liked "Obstacle.." and "Ego.." having read them some years ago. But I do not know. I feel like I somehow has gotten older (scary thought :) ) I think the content in Courage is somewhat of the same type and quality, but I have only read a few chapters and it somehow comes off as trying too hard.

I am sure it is more me, than the content/author that has changed. But the original comment is so right in saying "You pay to be inspired".

Holiday is a good first step, but as others has said, go to the classics. Senaca, Marcus Aurelius etc

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