As an extreme example, pickup artists had a wave of success a few years back and people paid big money for those ridiculous courses. They got replaced with Andrew Tate style "a real man just smokes and fights and hates women" type content and people paid money with the hopes of becoming like them. Trends and life goals change, but people still gobble up self help.
we've seen it with exercise/dieting we've seen it with women/dating this types of things always persist
The former imploded in the aftermath of Neil Strauss' The Game, which made some of the popular techniques well known and/or mocked (e.g. you had Howard on Big Bang Theory who in the beginning "demonstrated" several of the more ridiculous methods) and a lot of the field pivoted towards closer to regular self-help because the weirder stuff would get them called out.
I wonder to what extent that contributed to channeling the people who didn't want to put in the work towards people like Andrew Tate, with the mockery that followed and the less extreme coaches in that field moving away from it leaving a whole bunch of angry young men ripe for the picking, now with one more bone to pick.
Though what helped me most was a mix of being more assertive, meditation and a strong sense of playfulness.
I always went the improv route, so while I read a lot of mainstream pickup stuff back then, I was too lazy to use it. Also, when it was clearly mean then I didn’t do it either (such as negging). It was fun to get some skill in being cocky and funny, but ultimately I fell in love with being playful. Communicating that way is so much fun, and it’s fun to go balls to the wall creative. Yep, I am in love with a communication style and way of looking at the world. So there’s that (I also was in love with learning Italian for a while). But my default mode is looking at the world in an analytical and data-driven/empirical way (while not noticing my irrationality).
The more reasonable dating coaches are still out there. They simply aren’t part of the mainstream advice.
The current mainstream advice about dating sucks. Though, to be fair: the mainstream pickup artists from back in the day also sucked. It’s a lot like mining: you dig through a lot of advice that is plain dirt so you can find the gems of advice that are sparsely scattered around the dirt.
I gave some dating advice to some HN’ers. If anyone wants some, feel free to message me. My email is in my profile.
I am married nowadays (after a few relationships).
What I do find interesting is: I can turn this part of myself off and then no woman sees me. Mostly because I lack initiative and look at the world too seriously. It’s handy because I never get into weird situations like a certain woman liking me at work, for example. It also helped when I didn’t know how to break off contact with someone who I knew wasn’t for me.
I really want to ask: what would their reputation be if they were mainstream, in your opinion?
I find it to be a very interesting spot of culture and society, like at one point you had a bunch of guys who were dealing with the cognitive dissonance between what society asks of men and what society wants from them in a context that wasn't yet politicized.
It is my impression that when it started showing up a little bit in the mainstream, the accusations of misogyny came, and with that most who actually cared about misogyny left the boat, in public terms. So now all we have left is Tate and the likes.
I think effectively those coaches who worried most about reputations to a large extent pivoted from focusing on the dating aspect to more general self-improvement, where dating success might still get mentioned but without so much focus on it, and especially not so much focus on getting sex.
There's lots of mainstream self-help around overcoming shyness and getting better at socialising for example that was/is directly relevant to a lot of people who struggle with dating, and there are lots of ways of framing the non-manipulative, non-creepy parts of a lot of dating coach advice in ways that nobody would consider misoygynist.
But, yeah, I think at least to some extent the attention given to some of this subculture unwittingly ended up driving some of them into the arms of people like Tate. It's not that there weren't plenty of those coaches that deserved negative attention, but the end result might well have been worse.
Agreed
> and there are lots of ways of framing the non-manipulative, non-creepy parts of a lot of dating coach advice in ways that nobody would consider misoygynist.
Yea, agreed
One issue is that pickup artists always framed it as men seducing women. But quite frankly, most ideas would also work the other way around. I remember talking to some dating coaches who strongly disagree with me but they view women too much as women and men too much as men, whereas my view is that we’re humans first and our sex/gender second.
Viewing things in such a gendered way was a factor for misogyny.
Back in the day, I coached a woman to be better at dating. I taught her what I knew and she took her own spin on it and had tons of fun.
Just some examples as to what is interchangeable:
1. Being playful
2. Emotional intelligence
3. Good style
4. Cold approaching
5. Disqualification technique (e.g. what work do you do? I’m a hermit in the woods and sing to birds all day - when you are clearly not)
6. Open body language, and the concept of tonality, body language and non-verbal communication in general
7. Good logistics such as having a place of your own, moving a date to a second or nth location etc. (this just requires planning)
8. Being able to signal intent at the right time (I do it 10 to 60 minutes after when the playful vibe is clearly established)
Women can do these things too, and it works. This is just from the top of my dome. There are many more examples. Such as being optimistic, adventurous and genuinely yourself (I know sounds contradictory, it’s a long topic but yeah works for women who want to seduce men too).
I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this also works for gay/lesbian people but I never thought about that.
The whole status dance was never my thing.
Or more like playful banter? Those vibes are super fun, even though I am not much of a banter guy.
> The biggest problem with a lot of those techniques is when one side isn't aware - and of course that is often why they were being thought.
Seducing someone on pure technique, while possible, screws with many things. One of them is one’s self worth, as someone like that is now dependent on being a certain way that isn’t them.
> But, yeah, the part you list are all definitely interchangeable.
95% of my whole game is listed there, haha.
Push pull came up naturally through playfulness so I never consciously thought about it. Sometimes it came through spontaneous ballroom dancing. There were a few times where I taught a woman the latin swing. It feels as push pull but as a dance.
> It was also a very good demonstration of how fucked up those techniques can be - she was good at it.
Yea, can relate. I’m still a fan of women that have a similar style to my game. My game is wholesome. Women have mentioned as much. My wife’s style is similar. The first exchange on Tinder was awesome, I immediately yelled “she gets it!” in front of my computer screen :’)
Deep Work by Cal Newport gave me a way to think about my time management: information work is not the same as a factory line where doing the same thing at similar productivity from 9 to 5 makes sense, and it is important to dedicate long stretch of quality time to be productive (vs busy).
There are no silver bullets, but learning what worked for a group of people, testing it for myself, adapting it, and using it as needed has been helpful to me.
Also how you teach somebody a thing matters.
Stories have a profound effect on humans since the earliest of our days.
2. Dispute resolution. There is a three step process that transforms how you fight. A) what did I do to contribute, B) what I’ll do different next time, C) I am sorry and I’ll do X to make amends. When you do this you stop blaming others, which is what causes defensiveness, escalation, and the cascade of in tractable conflict. When you lead with this you’ll be amazed that your counter party feels heard, seen, validated, and connected to you and all of the sudden stops attacking, defending and starts to listen.
3. Characterization. In our lives we often define people based on aspects of their personality that are incomplete. The problem is that stunts their growth and limits the depth of the relationship. So the “ambitious” daughter, “funny” son, “techy” coworker gets defined as only that and can’t break out of it in relation to the person characterizing them. So when the ambitious kid has a failure they turn to the parent for support and get characterized instead treated like a human being that can change. So when an “ambitious” kid says I don’t want to go to university are they suddenly not ambitious? Are they allowed to redefine themselves? There are entire categories of books written by people with a chip on their shoulder because they were characterized.
I did a leadership training that had a session on purpose. They discussed the Harvard study that followed people over their lives and careers and their reported sense of wellbeing. The clear trend of what creates fulfillment at the end of life makes it hard to dwell on a lot of what most people suffer for during different phases of life. I have seen people in college, law school, early careers, doing startups, being parents, even all grinding it out and then looking back with the realization they were and remain miserable.
I could keep going and going and going.
#1 sounds a lot like stoicism.
I was recently surprised by a bookface status change :) might need to reach out to say “hey still alive just not in the original form”.
Is paying 15$ too much to pay? If learning about an obvious but unknown idea for doing the things saves 10 minutes a week, it is.
Do you need to pay 15$ for the result? No. But a result is better than no result.
It made me enjoy life more too, because I have a diaspora of cool and interesting connections who would go to bat for me if needed. I'm friends with the grocery store checkout guy now, he asked me to go antiquing with him two weeks ago. I made friends in my neighborhood, I have a lady I walk with every week who offered to help me garden and even when ordering flooring from Home Depot the dude invited me to come to NASCAR with him and his buddies.
It honestly just changed my perspective to see the good in everyone and through this process boosted my personal, professional and family relationships immensely.
This is the part that gets me to have an almost allergic reaction. It feels like an almost homogenization of people's personalities. In my mind I picture it like this: business man A reads How to Win Friends and Influence People. Businessman B also reads it. Business man A meets B and see that they're doing the psychological tricks of the book and think "wow this guy sure knows how to win friends and influence people like I do" so they get along fantastically.
It's similar to my aversion to books like "The Game" where some men seem to have the idea there's a surefire way to pick up women. Humans are diverse and should have differences in how they treat others and react. "Remember their name, smile, talk about the other person" and all the other tricks often gets me in the mindset of "this person is media trained / inauthentic".
Even though I agree with you, that's not a fact and, if a bunch of people are happy all being exactly the same, that's great for them. You can have any amount of ideas about how things should be but if someone is happy the way they are, that's what's important, that's the end goal.
I think the key difference- at least for the book I mentioned - is that it actually teaches to you take a genuine interest in those around you. It's not a mask or a ploy, it is making you engage positively in a way that yields genuine connections.
Example: if at the start of a conversation a personal anecdote comes to mind but you think 'no that's not what the book said, I should talk about the other person instead' I'd argue you're masking your natural persona. If your natural inclination is to raise an eyebrow but no that's not what I was taught smile instead, that's a mask. You see it often among high earning people and it's pretty transparent. Luckily you often also see people who are not at all like that everywhere and they're the ones I'll prefer having a drink with 10/10 times.
There are similar socialization rituals. When you are in karate you might be taught to bow before entering a dojo or sparring with a partner. Is that an inauthentic mask because you are conforming to the respect rituals? Or how about a military salute? These norms are part of the social lubrication that makes relationships easier to form. And the process of socializing a person is teaching them to incorporate them as authentic parts of themselves.
If you change your entire personality based on a self-help book.. that probably says a lot about your personality.
And anyway twin studies make the hardware seem more impactful than the software in many ways..
And twin studies, while persuasive that biology does have a massive impact are not dispositive compared to similar studies on human development theory that has longer population sizes that show self dialogue can shape behavior over time.
I don't think the word "inauthentic" quite captures why people react negatively to this sort of communication.
At least part of it comes from the fact that this particular style of "kindness-is-cool-coded" (for lack of a better word) communication happens to be the preferred style of insanely passive-aggressive people who take it upon themselves to brutally sabotage anyone who they deem unacceptable. It can also feel like you're being lead on by someone who actively dislikes you but is too polite to say it. Or you just start second-guessing every single thing they say and do.
But honestly, there's a pretty sizable minority of people who are repelled by this type of person and if you're naturally bad at reading the room you're probably better off making friends with other people that say and do dumb things.
I know I went through a "How to Win Friends and Influence People" phase when younger and basically ended up just putting off a whole of people.
Likely stems from a hundred and fifty odd years of the "always British" types swanning it over the "this is where we live and we love it" crowd.
Aside from being about forming sincere relationships, it handles influence with essentially this advice: Stop trying to force people to care about what you want. Understand what they want, treat them with respect, and align your request with their self-interest and self-image. If you come off as false doing those things, it’s because you didn’t actually do them, you pantomimed them.
“You’re such a generous person. I know you love being there for friends. Could you help me move Saturday?”
It's an example that of course sounds ridiculous to anybody that reads it, but it's essentially what the book teaches. Gather information not even about the person but how the person feels about themselves and then use that as a tool to make them feel good when you're talking to them.
I suppose it's also not helped that many of the people I've met who use this and admire this book have psychopathic traits. They're very good at faking caring but actually can't. It's a cold calculation to them and admittedly it's very effective at getting them ahead.
I don’t know how you could read that book in a modern frame and get syrupy insincerity out of it in good faith, but it is true that many people read this type of book looking for shortcuts and hacks, so they are not looking for the good faith reading. If you read the rest of NH’s work, you will find that his philosophy is firmly based on genuine good faith and delivering disproportionally high value to the people you interact with. (As well as some very 19th century metaphysics you can safely ignore)
But yes, many people read that book, ape the ideas, and act like asshats. It’s hardly a failing of the book.
Manipulation seeks to get someone to do what you want against their interests.
Persuasion seeks to align their interests with your interests in a mutually beneficial manner. The act of speaking to their interests by definition takes their well being into consideration.
And the book “the game” isn’t an example of that skill. People that follow those techniques find out quickly that they end up destroying the connections they make really quickly.
Note that The Game isn't a PUA manual, it's investigative journalism into the PUA scene.
I highly recommend the podcast: If Books Could Kill. They have an episode on this book.
It might limit his ability to effect his will in the world, but I see his availability as unchanged.
Have you ever stopped to think about the prices you pay for that behavior?
Let’s game it out. You don’t know me. I could be Paul Graham for all you know. I could be the person in the world that would unlock the very door you need to open to get what you’re working towards. I could be someone totally vulnerable and insecure and end up cascading into despair based on your comment.
That being said. I thought it was a funny comment.
This is very passive aggressive. You should think about how you communicate to people.
Your second paragraph is playing the victim while you just acted the agrresor in the previous.
Your third paragraph seems to make it sound like you have a point but it essentially boils down to we are all strangers on the internet. And okay?
If you had just written the last sentence, i would have respected your comment much more.
I know i am just a stranger but we are talking about perception and self help here. And from what I've read, i am not leaving with a positive perception of you based on your comments sorry.
I don’t think anyone is a victim or an aggressor. Both people do something to contribute to any conflict and are responsible to acknowledge what they did as the first step (see my previous post).
The point that we are strangers is that 1. he is making assumptions on incomplete information and expressing it with confidence that is unwarranted and 2. For all he knows I could be someone that, in real life, he would regret alienating like that.
As far as your opinion of my comments, your perspective is as valid as mine. I am curious, what do you think my positions are? What do you think my intentions are in this thread?
I am not a failed prompt coder, I personally built am a health care ehr that integrated a wide range of legacy tech well before AI as a coding agent was a glimmer in anyone's eye.
I say that in the hopes that you understand your insults are missing the mark so maybe it's time to update your wetware.
But you’re too smart for all that, right? So smart you spend your time trolling anonymous people online lol
There’s that XKCD about someone learning something new that was just thought to be something everyone knew.
Also you don’t know what you don’t know.
Agree though — coaching and persuasion are a huge part which is why I think a lot of these books seem ‘fluffy’ if all you’re wanting is a collection of facts.
With these types of books(and I read a lot of self help) I generally expect to get like 1-2 good pieces of advice/ideas per 200 pages so I generally just scan through them until I hit areas that seem high value then read those areas more deeply. I've read all of Tim Ferriss' books and haven't really gotten anything I can think of from his stuff to be honest they are a bit too general for me but I've gotten some good advice from his podcast though I only listen to maybe one episode in 10 when it is with someone or about something that sounds very interesting and even then I tend to scrub through it since there is a lot of filler in a 2 hour podcast.
In Zion National Park there's a hike called Angel's Landing. You wind up on this ridge, with a 1000 foot cliff on one side and a 500 foot cliff on the other side. And the ridge is not very wide - only a couple of feet in some places.
Parenting is like that. You think, oh, I see people causing problems by being too strict, so I want to back away from that cliff. But there's a cliff behind you, so don't back too far...
And the problem with parenting books is that, if you're the kind of parent who needs the books warning you about being too strict, then the books that warn against being too lenient are probably the ones that resonate more with you. That is, you're drawn to the ones you don't need, not to the ones that you do need.
All that said, yes, get books and read them. Be sure to get a variety of them.
I can't give specifics off the cuff, as I'm well past that phase now.
I read Nurture Shock before my kids were born. One of its main arguments is to praise effort rather than natural abilities ("you worked hard" rather than "you're smart"). Being one who naturally withholds praise, its message of not over-praising resonated with me.
In retrospect, I should have praised kid #1 more. It took me 10+ years to realize that. The book was not wrong but also not the message I needed.
What did you notice and what were the consequences of the strategy of praise. I’d like to learn from your experience.
tl;dw celebrate don't manipulate.
I have noticed that my daughter responds so much better to compliments like, "I am really impressed how you handled situation X, you stuck up for yourself in a way that doesn't alienate yourself with your friends. I know how hard that is to do well ..." When I give the reason for the praise it doesn't come off, intended or not as "you did good for a kid." I don't do it everytime, but sometimes the praise works to give another reflective or metacognitive pass over the event.
Children the Challenge chapter 3 discusses encouragement.
All this stuff should be done tastefully and without being overbearing. Like the previous poster said, it's a balance.
The How to talk books(there are a few of them for different ages), no drama discipline.
Cal Newports books while not specifically about parenting have helped me with disconnecting more from my tech which has always been a challenge since it's my job and a part of a lot of my hobbies which has definitely led to being a better father.
I’ve even read aloud a few chapters to my kids, because it’s very suitable for communication with parents as well
That’s also why authenticity and honesty matter. If you lie to your children or spouse or colleague they might do what you want one time but over time not trust you. If you are inauthentic they will also learn that you have ulterior motives and become distrustful.
The last thing I’ll say is it’s not always a negotiation. With young kids or direct reports there is elevation in the relationship, meaning one person gets to make the decision and the other gets to follow the instructions. So when a toddler is saying I don’t want to brush my teeth if you treat it like a negotiation you actually make them less secure about their place in the world because they aren’t ready to make every decision for themself. One good technique I learned is to simply present two choices. “You can brush your teeth or let me brush your teeth”. That’s very different than “let’s go brush your teeth” which can be answered yes or no. So it’s not always necessary to engage in persuasion. Sometimes framing is all you need.
When communicating, you don't simply recite every datum you know. You edit, you choose facts to communicate a specific set of points. Those points themselves are not random; they are in service of helping you achieve some goal (to get someone to laugh, or to get someone to do/not do something, or to change someone's opinion of you, to make someone feel comfortable, to get a person to bond with you, or whatever).
> am I serving the other person's actual interests
This is the key.
> would I be fine with them seeing exactly what I'm doing
See my first paragraph. Nobody thinks you are reciting facts at random when you talk to them. QED to the extent anyone thinks about it, they understand that you are trying to advance some agenda (drop the connotation on that word). Because this is how human communication works.
The book teaches how to actually hear people even in the very emotionally charged situations, how to properly ask them questions to understand their point of view and their needs.
If I understand my son’s needs and can give him what he wants in exchange of him giving me what I want, how is that a manipulation? I can yell at him, impose sanctions (eg no minecraft for two days) and we both will be greatly dissatisfied. Or we can both get what we want, which is a win-win.
I don't have a problem with generally understanding someone's needs. You ask what he wants, you say what you want, you both find a common middle ground.
But that's not what I'm worried about. He also teaches you things like give gifts to instill a sense of reciprocity. Use odd numbers so it appears as if you've put in research to arrive at this figure. "Bend reality" by moving around deadlines. Take advantage of cognitive biases like loss aversion.
Actual empathy is one thing, steering someone into thinking that your preferred outcome was their own idea is another. And that steering is precisely the manipulation I can't shake off. I'd be fine with the other person knowing I'm actually empathizing. But all those other techniques rely on the other person not noticing, which falls into my definition of manipulation.
So if I know that these things are as they are, and use them to communicate more successfully, is that manipulation? Then it would also be learning manipulation if kids are sent to school to learn how to write well, or how to do a presentation.
I had a situation with my kid a while ago. They were already tired, but had to take a shower. When I proposed that verbally, they denied. Then I showed them the warm water coming out of the showerhead, and they instantly agreed. So I got what I wanted (the kid getting clean), because I knew how to communicate successfully. But that isn't manipulation: I didn't lie, I didn't have a personal advantage at their cost etc. I just made it easier for them to anticipate what taking a shower would feel like.
So perhaps the distinction should be: If I can honestly and wholeheartedly argue to myself that my intentions are to the best of all participants, then that is communication. If I only care about my outcome, or even want to have adverserial outcome for the others, then that is manipulation.
But we can't use "not noticing" some mode of communication as part of the definition of manipulation simply because we all notice almost nothing consciously, compared to the sensory input we get every second of our lifes.
[1] A pretty approachable book about that, written from a researcher: How emotions are made, from Lisa Feldman Barret
It worked the first time and has reduced my own emotional reaction and create much more peace.
And while I won't suggest it will work for everyone or this is a scientific process with sufficient information (but should be explored) I find resources like this useful.
But that's the other side of these books, understanding "the other side" of people.
I like to believe it all adds up to a big pile of knowledge that finds its place in one's personality / outwards behaviour. But to more observant, introspective, overthinking, possibly neurodiverse people, it just adds to a giant pile of social behaviours that some people seem to have naturally while others have learned / are forcing them.
Doing them costs me energy and makes me feel underhanded / ungenuine. At the same time maybe doing it more often will make them feel natural? I have no idea.
Can’t say anything about other books, but Never Split the Difference is about hearing and understanding other peoples’s wants and opinions. Not this pickup-artist-like bullshit.
[I can be wrong and I usually am ;)] but the book teaches just some way to better re-phrase your best intentions and I have started to think the phrases in my head...
Just be honest with people is what that book taught me. I highly recommend people reading it.
Now I will be honest that reading the book itself isn't gonna give you something. It depends highly on variety of factors. For example, the book also teaches to listen more often and I genuinely try to do it as well but I sometimes fail to do that as I am a bit expressive/talkative
I think it also depends on who you are and how the book reinforces some particular topics. You dont have to completely do everything the book says to have meaningful impact as then it would feel manipulative to other person, yea.
And at the very least, reading this books makes you aware of some logic behind what he's saying (for example. I speak a lot but I should listen more, because people like me are so many and everyone likes to speak and be heard but people who actually listen are rare)
and then I can realize that I am speaking too much and so I think that I am more aware.
More Awareness of a topic doesn't mean complete and utter mastery of it but long term persistence of that awareness helps out meaningfully.
TLDR: Just be yourself and see if something sticks from the books and to implement it slowly and the way you like. There isn't one perfect way (not one even in the books) to living life. At best, its collection of what other successful people are doing. I wouldn't suggest (completely) living off the books because you have your own life and way of living it and you should be honest about it to yourself as well.
The idea that the only goal of communication is to convey facts is (charitably) a pretty autistic view of interpersonal relationships.
There are many situations where conveying facts is not the primary goal, and there's a world of difference just in how facts are conveyed. Facts probably aren't going to stop your toddler screaming for ice cream. Telling your wife that dress makes her look fat likely isn't going to help either one of you. Calling out a coworker when they are wrong isn't going to improve your working relationship. And so on...
Facts won't stop a toddler crying for ice cream. But a clear unmoving boundary conveyed with love stops the intensity of their request and allowing them to have the sadness and anger at being told no and treating them with kindness and love even while they are expressing big feelings of disappointment creates a trusting, safe relationship.
The tactics themselves are morally neutral. They can be used to manipulate or elevate another person whose well being you are deeply committed to, the intention behind the tactics are what determines if it is manipulation or connection/persuasion.
Lacking happiness or charisma or confidence or the ability to quit smoking or any other run-of-the-mill self-help topic isn’t caused by a lack of relevant data: it’s a matter of perspective. Often, the best way to push through the problem is getting the perspective of someone that’s thought about it more. Whether self help books are an effective medium for that is another topic, but if they’re not, lacking hard facts wouldn’t be the problem.
Sometimes you just need someone to tell you common sense in the right way so that you actually listen to it.
I do, however, try to limit who and what I read though because there is a lot of derivative garbage out there.
I also think of reading self-help books (or management books) as giving myself time to engage with the subject. Even if there is no groundbreaking new information, it gives me time to think about the topic. If you couldn't tell yet, I'm a slow reader.
My solution to this problem is to set these books next to one of the two comfy chairs in the house. When I sit in one of these chairs, I consider whether I want to read a chapter, I can only read one chapter, I can only have two of these books going at one time.
And under the system it takes me about three months to finish one of the books up from less than a week. I also find I no longer hate• most of them and I learn a lot more.
• they still have a very high DNF rate.
I'm as skeptical as you are, but teaching you something you didn't know before ain't the only channel they could conceivable help through.
Eg reading their bible can help a devout christian, even though there's nothing in there they didn't already know.
I'm not in a position to verify more than a few of the factual claims made by the author (and a lot of it sounds like mumbo-jumbo), but it was persuasive enough to get me to exercise for health (instead of performance at a specific event) and my life has gotten much easier since I came to that realisation. Maybe I would have done so eventually without the book, but I'm glad the book sped the process up.
Why was this one guy more persuasive than the recommendation of basically every medical organization in the world?
Also, his correspondence with Epstein is quite damning.
Note that I was exercising before, only I didn't do it for health. But I also didn't suffer from any obvious problems. What I got out of every medical organisation in the world then is "You're fine. Don't worry about it."
I was probably fine, but I'm even more fine now; I'm capable of doing more of the things I enjoy.
This is alien to me, because for at least 50 years now, heart disease and diabetes has been at the forefront of basically every developed country’s health problems, for which the only solution proposed by all health authorities has been to eat less and healthier, and to do cardiovascular exercise almost every day. Even from elementary school, I remember being taught in gym or health class that being active and exercising was necessary for long term health.
I've been exercising for most of my life, I'm the guy that has been going to the gym since forever to many of my acquaintances, and so they have often talked to me about how they want to start exercising or how they are doing etc.
Nobody, and I mean nobody has ever said anything like "I'm so happy to decrease my risk of diabetes". My father stopped smoking and started riding a bike, motivated by cardiovascular health, what actually makes him happy though is to be able to go up the stairs without breaking into a sweat.
Ask anyone in a gym why they exercise, they will talk about health, just not in the way doctors do. The stick of "You will die in 20 years rather than 35" pales in comparison of the carrot of "you will feel better basically all the time"
Maybe you were born with all the knowledge necessary to be a good father/husband, but I certainly wasn’t. I imagine most people just have their parents to go off of, and we all know what a can of worms that can be.
I think, for a large number of people, self-help (especially the short form high intensity style content that influencers post is just "content" to "consume" - a form of cheap entertainment that's thrown out almost as soon as it's consumed. There's no enduring change. That takes time and an semi-innate desire to change. Then, all these things become sensible and useful.
I'm not a big fan of Ferris but I'm willing to bet that someone who sits down with one of his books and works through it slowly applying the lessons to his or her own life will see some kind of change as opposed to the typical person who just asks an LLM to summarise the book or a video about it and then decides that they've changed.
By I myself have done a lot of work to understand ways to shift attachment styles similar to yours.
The outdated sense of leader of the willingly lead is a different matter.
I have received multiple emails from alumni thanking me for my leadership, mentorship, and the culture I created. Leading is a skill like any other it can be improved with practice and I have worked hard at it.
My team has no problem disagreeing with me and knows I don’t want sycophantic agreement, they know that even if I ultimately make a decision I will consider all opinions and have seen me change my mind in response to a direct report disagreeing with me in public.
There are known mechanisms to foster a safe and effective environment like that such as separating people from ideas, removing consequences for failure and commitment to experimentation.
I’d suggest you’d read a few books so that you don’t have to reach for your gun but can use your words instead. Though the moment you’d claim any of those books helped you will be a bit of an ironic moment but so be it.
I recommend Non-violent Communication by Rosenberg for you. It got me out of a few pickles (arguments). Also going to a meditation retreat helps.
My wife and I both grew up in physically violent homes. My mom read that book and taught me and my siblings the lessons along with others. And my children have only ever experienced shouting or physical violence when they went to their grandparents house.
I understand you were using that phrase as hyperbole and did really mean it but there is a lot of evidence that the language we use shapes our prefrontal cortex and limbic system responses in every moment. By using that phrase you're subtlety sending your body and brain and anyone that read that into an anxious fight or flight response. That shuts down the ability to listen, persuade or connect. It triggers defensiveness, avoidance etc.
So even though you have a valid point lot of bad leaders exist, and often claim loudly to be good leaders with no self awareness of their actual weaknesses. Its hard to listen when a rhetorical gun has been drawn.
But I don’t understand the problem with this phrase. Maybe it’s an ESL (second lang.) issue, because I have only read one author that I recall that has used this phrase (poverty of stimulus?). But to my mind it isn’t even hyperbole. It’s just an expression saying “I am on my guard now”. Which means that you are skeptical, maybe even cynical. Yes, the immediate interpretation is that someone is reaching for their holster—not to shoot but to anticipate an ambush. But even that is just, you know, colorful in this context. In this context I am intending to express that I am skeptical. Not that someone is trying to fool me. But I am on guard against just taking someone’s experiences at face value; that their lifeworld is such-and-such is not even under debate, that is fine and no one is doubting that. What is under doubt in this context is what the proverbial room looked like when only one out of five people reported on it. Does that make sense?
[1] in sense 1(a) according to Merriam Webster
> But to my mind it isn’t even hyperbole. It’s just an expression saying “I am on my guard now”.
I'm Dutch, so English is a second language. I started at 7.
To me it comes across as hyperbole or something literal. Maybe different for native English speakers. Though I haven't heard my American family in law using it. And they say, to take some inspiration from you, all kinds of colorful things and I'd expect them to say stuff like this.
I don't live in the US with my wife though, so maybe I didn't have enough interactions with them. I will ask her.
I get that an idioms in a second language can be hard. “I reach for my gun” is an idiom but among the more aggressive range. Not quite true fighting words (which a reasonable person would interpret as an indication of imminent threat) but close, especially with the amount of gun violence in the US.
But as I said I heard your valid point. I would be curious about your experience with leaders. What has your experience been so far? What have you identified as effective and ineffective traits?
*(notice I don’t say good and bad because those words often have a value judgement or moral implications and influences people’s cognition. If I say a “bad” boss someone might think corrupt, evil, dishonest etc. someone might think lazy, too friendly, stupid which don’t have the same moral posture).
I ask because I am always interested in learning about how leadership is received in the world so can improve.
One of the most challenging realizations in my life came from band of brothers the hbo show. Everyone thinks they are captain winters but I saw more similarities in myself to the ineffective leaders (especially the guy that disappeared randomly); and had to do a lot of work to improve
I remember I had a bit of a relationship crisis with someone. Just learning the 10 min. TL;DR of a good friend of mine who was well versed in it helped a ton. Later I read it twice.
Sometimes I think I can get away with and flow on intuition. In tense conversations that sometimes go sideways and then I notice I have to use this way of communicating in order to keep things from not spiraling out of control and ultimately resolve things.
And why can't you believe someone's statement about themselves? How is it different to saying they're a good runner?
How to care less about what other people think, but in a healthy way
Same book can be ridiculed and appreciated by different people, sometimes even by the same person when they are in different stages of their life (especially if they have less self-awareness).
"You already know whether you are in love or not, you just need to trust this voice."
Depending on where you are in life and who you are as a person, this statement can simultaneously be called a platitude, or a meaningful statement that someone finds allows them to decide what is important in life at that point.
Which book is it?
Thank you. You made my point.
Oh and the fact they're making money? Yeah everybody has to eat, psychologists don't work for free either, neither does any doctor for that matter. There are people doing good out there and yes they will charge you plenty of money for it.
Many of the authors are selling their narrow experience as if it's divine revelation, often literally because they're religious. The grift usually continues with sponsorships, plugging their other books (or their friends' books), or seminars.
I've read enough about sociology and psychology now that the whole self help industry disgusts me. Receiving such books or recommendations unsolicited strikes me as an insult from folks to naive or lazy to really get to know me first.
I've got some bad news for you about the SaaS industry
https://bsky.app/profile/ifbookspod.bsky.social
It really is all the same book.
For nerds (like me) who think data and statistics are the way to persuade people, you're doing yourself a disservice by ignoring the truth. Lots of people think sales are icky, but much of life is influenced by your ability to persuade and sell, even yourself, to others.
Dale Carnegie and Steven Covey have both been heavily influenced by Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychotherapist and founder of individual psychology.
It’s almost like the designation of “self help” is so broad as to be totally useless.
But also pretty much all of the self-help books I've read can be summarized in a few paragraphs, that is, a blog post. The rest is repetition or examples. Which are important for learning and understanding, I suppose, but when an AI can both tell you the gist of it while applying it directly to your current situation, they can't compete.
This is my biggest issue with the self-help industry. There is a lot of self-help books out there with ideas that are genuinely valuable, or at least worth considering. But as you say, the entirety of the idea can be conveyed perfectly well in a blog post. But you can’t sell a blog post. So it has to be padded out with cruft into a book length publication that can be sold to people.
That’s how AI undermines the industry. It has those general ideas and can convey them in the simplistic, cruftless versions that are most helpful, and can iterate back and forth with someone on applications to their own life.
But the form of books … Yes, by some reason it collapses. I personally attribute it not to “people realise those guys are salesmen”, but with the fact that none of really good ideas were produced by such books for a while. Now anyone who really has a new angle or new idea to say — they go straight to YT/podcasts, bypassing writing a book altogether. Because of this, me personally, when I check bookshelves, do not see any really new or interesting idea published in the field.
Next, consider the mediums for selling self-help: (1) in-person events, (2) books, (3) YouTube. (1) scales the least, but has the highest branding building effect. (2) scales medium, because it costs money for the customer to buy the book. (3) scales infinitely, because it is nearly free. Further, the most financially successful YouTubers first build a personal brand, then begin sell product placement by sponsorships. Further, they also begin selling "merch" (channel merchandise). That is the real gold mine of YouTube. Even sponsonships for most channels with less than one million subscribers pales in comparison to selling "merch".
About (1) (2) and (3) above, I would say that humans are usually more influenced by [the most] (1) seeing a person live, [next most] (3) seeing a person on video, and [the least] (2) reading their book. Thus, it seems logical that YouTube will replace books for self-help.
Without reading the article, my first instinct (after writing the above) is that self-help books are not being replaced with AI/LLMs. Instead, they are being replaced by self-help YouTube channels.
> starting to realize
- George Carlin
That's hardly unique to the self-help world - doesn't a lot of tech also fall into that category?
I wonder if that is a reason for the decline rather than AI.
> my self help consumption (across all media) has been dropping lately
I share this idea because I see a similar pattern in myself. For the self-help YouTube videos that I do watch, I am/was most interested in (a) exercise/fitness/diet and (b) personal/romantic relationships. After 1000 hours or so of this sort of content, I learned how to improve and "ascended". Now, I don't need to watch as much because my thinking on these topics is more advanced.
Deeper: How will these channels sustain themselves? It does not look obvious to me! If I were running a self-help channel, I might intentionally delete old videos after 6-12 months. Why? So that I can remake the same content again (and again)... to get a revenue boost from new(er) viewers. For anyone who is a full-time self-help content creator, probably 90% of the revenue is made in the first 30 days. (Wild guess, but there will be an extreme cliff of some sort.)
A lot of those non free services seemed to involve very poorly written and syndicated coaching apps.
Sure, you don't need to read an entire book to get the idea to do something, but that's way in which ideas get into your head and consciously or not, guide your steps in certain directions.
Of course, everything in self-help books should be taken with a grain of salt and also applied differently for each individual. It's just a way to get more ideas of what's possible, similar to travelling: it doesn't force you to do things in a certain way, it just shows you what's out there.
Anyway, "self help" is still one of the largest sections at my local barnes and noble—certainly by far the largest non-fiction section.
About 15 years ago my friend showed me this video of a "self-help" guy he was impressed with and inspired by.
..it was over 30 minutes of rambling that sounded like it makes senses but meant nothing and lead nowhere.
Looking back it was like listening to how early LLMs were: Just long strings of random words and vague sentences without actually saying anything.
Or how Saruman's power of the tongue was described as.
It's depressing and obvious to see how many people could be misled by this kind of charlatanism.
AI if done right could cut a lot of crap from human society.
Extreme Ownership really helped me be a better leader and take more accountability for my own actions
Atomic Habits really helped me think about goal setting and what the underlying driver was
Coaching Habit improved my 1:1s drastically (I basically stopped talking or advice giving and just listened -- profound, I know, but the book helped smack me in the face with it)
Many more examples, but there is definitely a ton of self-help hack slop out there as well.
I for one used to enjoy such books but have turned more to mind-fuck scifi (i.e. I keep hunting for the Ted Chiang level books, although they are also very rare). I find meaning in those.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" is still popular today. Dale Carnegie wrote it in 1936.
Back in the '80s and '90s Tony Robbins infuriated millions of North Americans by spamming late television with his obnoxious self-help infomercials: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gUczh_vsRUI
As long as there have been dissatisfied people, there probably has been someone promising to be a deus ex macchina with the secret to turn their lives around.
There’s literally 100 years of self-help books before, who?
maybe you are judging and dismissing something with prejudice?