Personally I don't see the problem, as long as you're aware there is survivorship bias involved here.
What's the alternative really, seek advice from unsuccessful people? That seems worse :)
Personally I do both, read about what worked for people, also read about what didn't work for people, then ignore both and do whatever the fuck I want.
What bucket should I put this advice in?
But some advice is less specific than other advice though. Some things are always stupid, and some things are always smart, if you look at the context of our world and society. I find myself pursuing these "fundamental truths" with great interest lately, especially now that the world is changing so quickly.
Seek advice from the averagely successful people, since that is statistically what you're most likely to be.
Intuitively, I would guess that they have a better grasp of what made them fail than successful people have of what made them succeed.
Nonetheless, there are many successful people I would gladly listen to for advice, though they are often successful in a different meaning than what venture capitalists would use (e.g. parents with great kids, managing to keep a healthy work-life balance, happiness, and maybe even having time to spend on some cool hobby project -- you are heros!)
I know who the 17 years old is closest to.
If you can't do that - not sure anyone can help you.
That’s what you get from listening to “successful people”. You get to learn about all the things they tried that failed, then the things that did work on that 24th try, which was successful.
The “survivorship bias” people always seem to assume that the “survivor” lucked into his fortune on his first try ever, so he can’t have learned anything, so we don’t have to listen to him. But that’s seldom the case.
I’ve written about this before:
There are successful people that failed many times before being successful. Somehow these days, previous failures and persistence seems to be ignored and they focus just on the luck you got on the 20th try.