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Hm. The people that hate/don't like T. Ferriss: Can you summarize in one sentence why? (I understand that we sometimes just don't like people for no conscious
by scrrr 16y ago
Hm. The people that hate/don't like T. Ferriss: Can you summarize in one sentence why?
(I understand that we sometimes just don't like people for no conscious reason, perhaps some of you failed following his book, but there must be more?)
- axod 16y agoI think the main reason is that he sells books about how to be successful, but his only success is in selling those books. It's a scam. And the 'advice' is ridiculous. Most 'self help gurus' just prey on the stupid.
- InfinityX0 16y agoYou know he sold his previous company, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ferriss#cite_ref-7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ferriss#cite_ref-7
- absconditus 16y agoDid you bother to look into his previous company at all?
- jonhendry 16y agoAs do most nutritional supplement vendors.
- caustic 16y agoBecause if you dig into biographies of these self-promotional gurus, you'll see that they only succeeded in writing books about success. They are just frauds.
- kareemm 16y agoHe's an investor in Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. That alone seems to be a measure of success well beyond "writing books about success".
- jonhendry 16y agoThat's just a matter of having money to invest and connections.
- caustic 16y agoI frankly speaking didn't know about this. But reading Wikipedia article about Tim Ferriss I got the impression that it might be his book (4HWW) that earned him money that he began to invest in these companies. The timeframes match perfectly. I don't know, may be I am wrong here. Still I fill very allergic to all this positive thinking, self-help, goal-achieving and motivation literature. The skeptic in me just cannot stand it, everybody who writes it automatically gets "scam" mark from me. I'd rather suggest reading something like "Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America" by Barbara Ehrenreich instead.
- eavc 16y agoHe's artful in the worst way.
- rhizome 16y agoHis business is convincing people that his luck can be replicated on purpose.
- kitcar 16y agoBecause most of his ideas and recommendations don't scale - i.e. if everyone who competed in taekwondo tournaments won by pushing their opponents out of the ring, then they would change the rules to prevent that from happening. Similarly, if everyone launches their own business selling high margin nutritional products, the margins would get squeezed and the business would cease to be profitable (thereby forcing nutritional supplement providers to find new businesses, like self help books.) Encouraging large volumes of people to buy books with ideas which don't scale is pretty selfish, because with each additional book sale, while you make money, the value of the ideas contained in the book become less valuable. Lots of business self help books are pyramid like in that sense...
- kareemm 16y agoI think one of his core ideas is not about taekwondo tournaments or nutritional products, but about how to find hacks to get ahead quickly and make your life easier. EDIT: it seems Ferris is helping people figure out how to "Skip the Water": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2099453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2099453
- dstein 16y agoCould it be that people are just so blown away by his god-like awesomeness that they are humbled? I mean, we are talking about a man so awesome that he has the ability to simultaneously teach himself how to swim while inventing ways to cheat in martial arts championships.
- nhangen 16y agoHe's obsessed with ego achievements and self aggrandization and is unabashedly arrogant.