Most advice is right for the person giving it

Aurornis

Another variation of this: Advice is what the person giving it needs to hear for themself. This is oddly evident in beginner influencers trying to become gurus on social media. They try to write life advice from a position of superiority, but when you look closely they’re given themselves a little pep talk about how they want to be or what they need to hear. It doesn’t mean the advice is wrong, but you can see through the illusion that you’re hearing sage advice from someone who figured it all out long ago.

win311fwg

> Mark Cuban says the opposite In what way are they opposing thoughts? Steve Jobs said keep putting in the effort until you find the thing that you love. Mark Cuban also said keep putting in the effort until you find the thing that you love. The exact word choice may have differed, but they both expressed the exact same thing .

hk__2

> Which is why I find it pretty funny that Ozempic is arguably the biggest weight-loss breakthrough in decades - and all it does is make you…eat less. Billions in R&D, and the answer was the platitude the whole time. Ha. The problem was not that we didn’t know what to do ("eat less"), but to enable that solution.

randusername

We should distinguish between 1:many advice and 1:1 advice. An interviewer is really asking "how do you recommend people replicate your success?" which grounds the response in the hard lessons that person learned on their own journey. Personalized advice can be equally useless, but if that person really understands you and your situation you might be surprised how specific and valuable good objective feedback can be.

clickety_clack

If I have to choose between hearing advice (which I can ignore), or not getting any advice at all, I’d much rather get the advice. I’ve ignored a lot of advice in my time, but every once in a while a diamond sneaks through, and often I get an idea or two for a different way of looking at things.

yipinwong

(My analogy for this article only): Ideas gleaned from the article. AIs do not have all the contexts about you thus provide you guidance not fit for you. Advisors are the same, they don't know everything about you thus not all advices fit for you. You know about yourself the best (given you "reflect") and make trade-offs between what you know, and what you consider benficial to you. As I always bring up about making tradeoffs in HN in my comments, the article is solid.

elohimus

I really like this piece - but it points to a wider truth. All advice is contextual. - It's contextual to the advice giver: Is it specific to them? Do they have an ulterior motive or are beholden to someone with an ulterior motive, e.g. getting you to support their agenda or getting you to buy or vote. - It's contextual to you: Does that fit the way you operate? Does it play to your strengths? - And it's contextual to your ...well... context: Are you in a country where this advice applies? Do you have the financial means to execute on it, etc... Bottom line - there are very few pieces of truly universal good advice.

radial_symmetry

Scott Alexander has a great post on this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any...

glitchc

Sadly no one wants the truth, so folks like Jobs and Cuban have to layer it with bromides. Truth is they're both giving the exact same advice, it's just that the honest version is deeply unpopular, because it implies that there is no secret sauce. The advice is: Work very hard on something, and you too might get lucky. Jobs' version is just slightly modified: Work very hard on something (you care about), and you too might get lucky.

sksksk

There are so many podcasts where "successful" people (within a narrow definition of success) give advice. The issue there, is that for every "successful" person, there are thousads who did the exact same things and didn't make it. Arguably a better thing would be to interview the ones who failed, and learn lessons from them. Secondly, the person themselves can be selective in what they share, they may talk about the risks they took to get where they are, but not about the backstop of a wealthy family to fall back on if it all goes wrong (for example).

solatic

You don't ask for advice to have someone else make your decisions for you, rather in the hope that you learn about options you didn't otherwise realize were open to you. You ask for advice to "get out of your head". It may not be right for you, but you'll have made a better decision for having considered it.

dec0dedab0de

Is it just me, or is this just an ad with a headline that is trying to make common sense sound profound?

1970-01-01

The X-factor of LLM AI advice is how it consists of both artificial and intelligent responses; It cannot cloud judgement by having feelings and will still think very carefully about your problem.

thomastjeffery

In other words: communication requires empathy.

readthenotes1

No support for the assertion in the title.

romesmoke

Most advice given by people unaffected by whatever comes out of whatever you do with the advice given is garbage (Nassim Taleb, Skin in the Game ).

podgorniy

There is something related to meritocracy and sharing back in all these ideas. But i can't pinpoint extractly what is it....

Hasz

> We trust confident people, even when they're wrong I think this idea can be expanded on, and it is to separate the merits of the idea from the delivery of the idea. I see this frequently with: - neurodivergent people (of whatever variety) - ESL speakers - cultural clashes (eg Dutch / American meetings) If you can separate delivery and the merits of a discussion, you can benefit both ways -- taking a skeptical view on the best pitches (eg from anyone on a Forbes 30 for 30 list) and an optimistic view on the worst.

999900000999

“Best advice I heard was don’t listen.” - Cousin Stizz Don’t value the experiences of others over your own. You’ll end up in a never ending loop of trying to change instead of working on your own path. People largely don’t give a crap about you. For myself I had to leave my hometown to be happy. And like that everything was easier. I had an amazing partner and a better commute. You don’t need to validate yourself vs the opinions of others.

alhirzel

Best advice I ever received was to learn to take good advice. Still not sure how to do that...