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Comment by curuinor | Hacker News Reader

Dale Carnegie created it, Tim Ferriss is a century too late to point as origin.

Or you could say in other words: Everything is a remix!

Dale Carnegie and Steven Covey have both been heavily influenced by Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychotherapist and founder of individual psychology.

Dale Carnegie -> Jim Rohn -> Tony Robbins -> [all hacks now]

the man leveraged the fact that his name was the same as Andrew Carnegie (having no relation) to launch a publishing empire. it was hacks from the beginning

Even worse he changed his name from Carnagey, presumably to deliberately cause confusion.

Highly recommend "If Books Could Kill"

https://bsky.app/profile/ifbookspod.bsky.social

It really is all the same book.

All the writers that I love to hate - hariri, gladwell! Will give it a listen

I wanted to love it since despite being a self help reader I can definitely see a lot of the bad/dangerous advice given all over the place but I often found them really stretching to make stuff negative and being very smug about it which just made it the same issue as the source material. Especially annoying since in most cases there were really solidly valid negatives to go after in the books. It's very much a lets build a straw man then tear it down podcast.

I listened to a couple episodes and concur, the overt-criticality and smugness was off putting.

The very first thing I did when coming to this thread was search for if someone had already mentioned "one book theory". My favorite episodes of IBCK are mostly the self-help trash.

Why is Tony Robbins a hack?

I think calling these people 'hacks' is not quite the right word. They're very good at what they do, it's just a lot of people don't like or don't value what they do. I actually have a fair bit of respect for their craft (the ability to draw attention and turn that attention in to customers) even if I feel like what they're selling is fake, or fake-adjacent

It is wild to me that people consider Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins in the same boat. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie completely changed how I communicate with people, for the better.

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.

Robbins is much more an unintentional heir to Sartre (ducks) than Carnegie.

people in tech i.e engineers discount sales - but damn the book by Caldini - Influence & Jim Rohn In terms of sales training - help a lot.

Why can’t you go back to things like Meditations? Or Proverbs in the Old Testament?

It’s almost like the designation of “self help” is so broad as to be totally useless.

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