site banner
greyenlightenment  investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...  3mo ago (greyenlightenment.com)   1837 thread views

Why does advice work so poorly?

greyenlightenment.com
2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don't entirely disagree with negative traits of modern people, but resisting submission does make sense from one perspective. Think of it like an immune system. Most people who preach something merely want your money. Most people who do speeches merely want you to invest in their cause. Most charities are scams. Everything competes for our attention and uses advanced techniques to manipulate us for the sake of making money.

Over time, one learns to have one hell of a strong defense mechanism. I can drink alcohol until I struggle to stand, and I will still remain rational. I'm immune to hypnosis, I sometimes notice that I'm dreaming because I realize that something is wrong. I've been suicidal and I've been rather manic, and in both cases, those around me wouldn't notice unless I told them.

To trust somebody with all your heart, to give yourself to something else, to invest 100% in one thing, to let down your guard entirely, these are all powerful choices, and people who can choose them tend to be wonderful people, but life simply teaches us that this is naive and dangerous. So we become superficial narcissists who don't commit to anything unless it offers immediate rewards.

I hope to be more healthy, but it requires staying in a healthy environment, and there's less of these by the year.

You can't make all advice part of yourself, though. For the same reason that you cannot be every class at once in an RPG game. There's very much "paths" to take in life, and advice which is good for some people, but incompatible with ones path. "one man's meat is another man's poison" and such. Nietzsche seems to value a sort of purity when he says "With fifty blotches painted on your face and limbs, thus you sat there to my amazement, you people of the present!". He certainly seems to advice against nitpicking a bit of everything and plastering it on yourself.

You can't make all advice part of yourself, though. For the same reason that you cannot be every class at once in an RPG game.

Agreed, you can't be universally naively trusting. You can end up following really bad advice, or you can end up endlessly switching paths as you are persuaded by new advice. In an RPG, if you never specialize down any skill tree, you never reach the higher level skills that make the whole thing work.

I don't entirely disagree with negative traits of modern people, but resisting submission does make sense from one perspective. Think of it like an immune system.

What do we call someone with an immune system that attacks vital organs? Sick or healthy?

Most people who preach something merely want your money. Most people who do speeches merely want you to invest in their cause. Most charities are scams. Everything competes for our attention and uses advanced techniques to manipulate us for the sake of making money.

Was this less true in the past, or is it merely that the grifters of yesteryear have mostly been forgotten?

It's perhaps true that much of the clergy was cynically parasitic on the medieval body politic. But that's a different question from whether they were net positive!

I don't think humans really attack themselves, they just close themselves off of the world in a manner which is unhealthy. It's like dying of thirst in front of a puddle of dirty water (edit: Or just water which you don't know the purity of before you drink it). Nietzsche advocated isolation for the purpose of growth, but he also wrote "whoever would remain clean among human beings must understand how to wash himself even with dirty water". I wonder if he thought of this as being possible.

It was much less true in the past, I think (at least, in our own communities. I'm not sure about our relation with strangers/outgroups). We've become much more exploitative, we're also more prone to look for the worst in others, as well as to look for weaknesses which can be exploited. I don't think old people are easier to scam because old people are dumb, I think it's because society has gotten less honest faster than old people have managed to adapt to that fact.

We're in the age of resource exhaustion, and "trust" is no less of a resource than oil is. Even "dignity" and "reputation" are resources. Companies like Blizzard are currently burning these. Resources like honor and respect are nearly depleted in the western world in my opinion. Mathematically, I think the solution is to optimize for the long-term rather than the short-term. If you optimize for an infinitely long period of time, it appears to me like you're immune to all social dilemma's and things like Goodhart's law and other harmful incentives. So the entire problem seems to be excessive short-term optimization.

Perhaps current parasites are no worse than those of old, but there seems to be many more of them now that we're all global rather than members of small local communities. And being "local" had advantages, I think it's the cause of the whole "high trust society" thing. A king would suffer if they hurt their own kingdom, so incentives like that protected against evil somewhat. But now, you can earn money by hurting somebody 1000s of miles away.

I'd ask "Which is best, to adapt well to a sick society, or to adapt poorly to a sick society"? Personally, I'm not entirely sure.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats