Hacker News Reader

Comment by chaosmachine | Hacker News Reader

Before taking anything in this article literally, you should be aware this is the same guy who claims ghosts give him gambling advice:

Several people have asked if I’m still able to connect with my recently departed friend Ron who died in a car accident on August 14th. The answer is yes. He’s been hanging around often. The connection is so strong that I don’t have to meditate or anything. I just think of him and can instantly converse with him. I’ve never experienced such a strong connection before.

Seriously, read the whole thing[1], he claims his ghost friend helps him win at blackjack.

[1] http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/08/can-spirits-help-yo...

View on HN

Sorry, but what does that have to do with the validity of the original post? So the guy talks to some imaginary being? Guess what, billions of other people do that too! It's called religion. Yeah, I admit it is kind of strange but that's a just an ad hominem attack. I actually found the article interesting.

It's beyond strange, it's credibility damaging. How can you trust anything written by a guy who claims dead people take up residence in water bottles?

Then Ron [his dead friend] says to me, “Put the water bottle back on the table. It makes it easier for me to see.”

And wouldn’t you know it? As soon as I return the bottle to the table, I start winning again — fast.

All I'm saying is this guy isn't a credible source. He makes fantastic claims with no evidence, and people should be aware of that.

That's hilarious. Anyways, like other readers, I too am skeptical of his "finished 2 bachelors in Comp Sci in 3 semesters" claim, as well as his psuedoscientific polyphasic sleep theories, but there is still a great deal of truth to what he's written about setting goals and time scheduling.

It almost seems like he gets a kick out of making people believe his outlandish claims.

When reddit first launched publicly, there was a new Steve Pavlina article every week on the #1 spot -- polyphasic sleep, passive sources of income, etc. I can't be the only one who remembers this.

I agree this guy comes off as a crackpot and that damages his credibility.

But you have to admit he is unusually self-aware for a crackpot:

If you haven’t concluded by now that I’m totally nuts, this post should push you over the edge.

Most crackpots are quite aware of the public, and expert, opinion on their ideas and use that to strategically undermine criticism by acknowledging at upfront. Drawing attention to criticism lowers the chance that someone will be influenced by that criticism: "if the crackpot himself draws attention to the argument, surely it can't be any good?"

The fallacy here is that acknowledging some opinion exists in no way implies you have have seriously considered it; let alone have refuted it.

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

I do have to give him one thing. When I was younger and more naive his polyphasic sleep experiment seemed pretty neat and his motivational articles really got me going.

However once he started in with the nonsense I bailed out and started looking to other intellectuals for inspiration.

People who are new to SP don't need to be warned. They will get what they want out of it and eventually come to their own conclusions ;)

(I forgot to mention that in 2005 I'm pretty sure he claimed to have 1 single degree in CS)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com