Here's a comment I made a few days ago here on HN about a blog post, it may be relevant: ————— The author is relating second-hand information. That’s useful,

Here's a comment I made a few days ago here on HN about a blog post, it may be relevant: ————— The author is relating second-hand information. That’s useful, it’s good to have people who have a skill of curating business advice and pointing us in good directions. But my first-hand advice is to recognize the difference between: Alice: “I’m making five figures a month for five hours a week reselling five products.” And Bob: “People like Alice make as much as five figures a month for five hours a week reselling five products.” In the first case, Alice has direct experience with success. In the second case, the incentives are such that Bob is someone whose experience and expertise is in selecting stories that have verisimilitude, that is, things that sound true. And what makes something sound true? Quite often, something we want to be true sounds true even if it isn’t, and something we don’t want to be true doesn’t sound true, even if it is. Bob nearly always sounds more authoritative than Alice, because Bob’s business is sounding authoritative, whereas Alice’s business is being authoritative. Why doesn’t Alice always sound authoritative? Because she speaks the truth whether it appeals to our biases or opposes them, whether we want her truth to be true or not. Bob, on the other hand, is an authority on what people want to hear. Bob is just as expert in Bob’s business as Alice is in hers. Bob uses metrics and data to write headlines and even choose the most compelling adjectives to use in his posts. Bob sounds authoritative to people lacking expertise in whatever Bob is talking about. The Bobs of this world can (but don’t always) become “a poor man’s idea of a rich man, and a failure’s idea of a success,” because their customers are people early in their lives and careers. So what to do when a Bob suggests something is true? Well, we shouldn’t dismiss it. But let’s think of it the way we’d think of Bob referring a candidate for a job in our businesses. We might fast-track them into an interview, but we’d still interview the candidate. And so it must be with business advice. Bob pointing us to an idea is Bob referring an idea to us. Our job is to take Bob’s referral and still validate the idea by seeking original, authoritative expertise. Bob’s value is suggesting ideas to think about, not teaching us about business. p.s. I say all of the above as an authority on the subject: I’m a Bob. ——— https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31715485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31715485