4 ms·
If you're going to write advice for a large audience, some of it is going to be old/obvious to experts. Part of that is because non-experts haven't heard the id
by jessriedel 7y ago
If you're going to write advice for a large audience, some of it is going to be old/obvious to experts. Part of that is because non-experts haven't heard the ideas, and part is because they have heard them but don't practice them. The ideas in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" have been widely publicized, yet they are still deep, timeless, and under-applied.
In other words: famous people who give bad advice (e.g., "I won the lottery, and so can you!") seems much more deserving of criticism than famous people who give unoriginal and yet still under-utilized advice. Indeed, if you are a famous person with legions of fans asking for your advice, and you've already written down your best non-trivial ideas for experts, it seems praiseworthy to help non-experts by telling them boring useful stuff.
- claudeganon 7y ago> famous people who give bad advice (e.g., "I won the lottery, and so can you!") ...but this actually is a succinct account of startup culture proselytizing?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoI don’t think the claim is that he has particularly boring ideas, just that he isn’t uncommonly skilled at expressing them.
- jessriedel 7y agoOh, maybe? Sort of ambiguous, given the context is writing advice. If so, then there's an obvious rebuttal: the point isn't to keep you riveted, it's to communicate an idea. The uncle example is inapplicable because the problem with the uncle is that he is telling you an idea you don't care about, not that he's delivering true useful information in a boring way. EDIT: Also, Wikipedia links to some damning reviews of the David Foster Wallace book, including this one (yikes): http://www.rudyrucker.com/oldhomepage/wallace_review.pdf http://www.rudyrucker.com/oldhomepage/wallace_review.pdf