About "self-help"

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#1
There is a lot of questionable self-help advice out there



Self-help books typically ignore the fact that a lot of things are simply outside your control and even when you are 'in control' you are still limited by biology, especially your brain. No amount of positive thinking will allow you to do the impossible. Most startups are failures, most bold ideas are wrong, most people do not have what it takes to compete at the highest level.

You need to prioritize, how important is something for you, what's the probability of success, what would it take to try.

Let's take physics, let's say you want to discover the fundamental theory of physics. Sure it would be nice if you were able to discover it but how much is it worth, wouldn't you rather have things like a family, financial success, power?

Given the number of people who have already dedicated their lives to physics so far the probability of you finding a theory of everything (assuming it even exist) might be one in 10^7, often people who think they are onto something delude themselves into thinking "my theory is really promosing" even though it's a dead end and you are pretty much wasting your time.
 

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#2
Bad advice mixed with decent/good advice
It's a general problem that self-help books mixes decent advice with outright harmful advice and if you are not thinking critically bad things can happen to you.

Giving universally good advice is really difficult since what may work for one individual may be harmful for another since people are in different situations and have different talents. Thus even if we had evidence in favor of some self-help regime in general that does not mean you could just blindly follow that and have a guaranteed good outcome, you still need to figure out what will work for you.

A general problem with the self-help industry is that instead of giving advice specific for one individual they offer a one-size-fits-all solution since that is easier to scale and can be marketed to pretty much everyone.
 

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#3
Being overly optimistic can end very badly
You telling yourself you are more capable than you are can end very badly, then you might quit your job and start a business ended in catastrophic failure. If you play poker it's important that you know the flaws in your play so you do not play in scenarios where you are statistically losing.

You might invest money in something very questionable and lose everything thinking "this will be great for me".

If you have passing for something you are really bad at maybe it's better just to leave it as a hobby?
 

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#4
The millionare fasttrack
In this book they divide financial strategies into the following

Sidewalk: no real respinsibility, you dont even try to save, spend money you dont have, just leave for the moment
Slowlane: you slowly build wealth by saving (stockmaret, owning a property) and maybe when you develop altzheimers you will have a lot of money to spend.
Fastlane: you get rich by having your own company.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN6vRaMgzok&list=PL_McNQWMZGjGqfL4fs1USwF9v4e4GUBJx

One obvious objection to the book is that you can live a good life without being rich and some people enjoy their jobs. The book also ignored the fact that you can choose something between the sidewalk and the slowlane, you simply buy what you need to live a good life and save the extra.

Many people who save money do not actually put much effort into it, they simply earn more than they spend and they cannot really find anything worthwhile to spend their money on.

The book take issue with advice where the individual giving it isn't following it, this however ignores the fact that a lot of people are simply not in a position where their own advice apply or they lack discipline to actually follow their own advice. A fat guy might warn you about eating like him and then you might want to listen.

The book does engage in a lot of victim blaming, one example was a women that was a victim of identity theft "if he hadn't had her purse out in the open that wouldn't have happened"
 

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#5
Victim Blaming
Blaming yourself for when bad things happens to you is generally bad for your mental health

https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/this-remarkable-32-year-study-of-kauai-islanders-reveals-7-keys-to-living-a-resilient-life.html

Victim blaming can also be extended indefinitely

I took SSRI pills that my psychiatrists prescribed and now i have athakisia and PSSD
Nobody forced you to take that drug it was your fault
While it is true that you can take steps to protect yourself this however takes effort and it's not clear it's worth the price. Also: nobody is completely safe from these quacks.

I didn't want to start treatment (abilify) but my psychiatrist treatened with a community treatment order, now i got diabetes as a result.
Why did you go to the psychiatrist in the first place and why didn't you challenge it in court
This of course ignored the fact that psychiatrists hold a lot of power over the patient and may retaliate if the patients takes it to court, also even if you take it to court and make a good case you may still lose becuase the court always side with psychiatrists (this is the case for some Swedish mental health courts).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Antipsychiatry/comments/gvxtfs/psychiatrist_threatened_me_that_if_i_dont_cancel/

Some people are more or less forced to see a psychiatrist, this can be to get welfare of becuase someone called the cops on you.
The nazis sent me to a gaschamber becuase i was viewed as a jew, i didn't even know i would count as that
That's your fault from not looking things up and fleeing/hiding before it's too late.
A lot of people became victims as children and had no real chance, if you are victim of infant genital mutilation there wouldn't be any way for you to prevent it. Even if you are older as a child you can still be essentially powerless becuase authorities are unwilling to intervene or worse side with your abusers.
 

Oxblood

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#6
A good self help advice is “brush your teeth”

Boomer advices are good, for example a classic “treat them like shit”. It’s a free advice.
 

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#7
A good self help advice is “brush your teeth”
Most self-help stuff that actually work is boring like

0. Do not be too honest with people.
1. Dont eat too much calories (otherwise you get fat)
2. Do not donate money to charity
3. Use tor browser when doing stuff online you dont want other people to find out about.
4. Do not be ashamed of getting a government handout.
5. Do not start a company unless it's limited liability (in the case it goes bankrupt).

There is no magic formula to get rich. Just preserving your wealth is hard.
 

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#10
About social skills
People who fail in life are often told that they need to improve their social skills.
What i realized is that the whole notion of "social skills" often ignore the reality of social interactions.
Let's say i get contacted by someone trying to sell me something i do not need. In that interaction the seller is the one who need social skills to make me buy shit i do not need. I do not need any social skills in that interaction, all i need is critical thinking (realizing it's a bad idea).

The theory i came up with of course wasn't something new

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_exchange_theory

Let's say you are a low value male trying to data a high value female. In that case the female doesn't need any social skills when interacting with you since she doesn't need anything from you in the first place. Instead it's you as a high value male who might benefit from social skills since that might allow you to manipulate that female into initiated a relationship with you that only you benefit from.

So we end up with a situation where loads of who do not offer anything of value is trying to reach out in various ways and people of actual high value being increasingly skeptical of strangers often just ignoring them.

With dating we have seen a transition towards apps like tinder where you cannot even contact a female in the first place unless you match with her first. That makes it harder for low-value males to attract females since they might never get a chance in the first place (especially with regard to looks).

You do not need social skills to be successful
If you run your own business you do not actually need much in terms of social skills. The by far the most important factor will be the ability to make good decisions (such as which products to develop, price, when to sui, etc).

Generally companies actually avoid having too many people working on contacting potential buyers (such as cold-calling) instead they focus on developing products people actually want and get decent reviews and media coverage.

Power and social interactions
The people at the bottom of social hierarchies need enough social skills to please people with power. For example if you live in China it's in your interest to please CCP officials since they have power over you, it's not really in your interest to please some falun-gong leader.

You do not need to please people who do not hold any significant power over you.
So when it comes to interacting in a society as long as you do not get into legal trouple or sent to some psych-ward you are likely fine.

Most people who hate you are not going to risk getting into legal trouble in an attempt to go after you. This is especially true in countries with a strong legal system that prevent vigilante violence.

Looks
Being good looking will be very beneficial when it comes to social interactions. People very often judge people heavily based on looks.

https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1037/0033-2909.110.1.109

Of course if a male struggle with social interactions due to being unattractive it will be blamed on lack of social skills.
 

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#11
About andrew tate
Andrew tate is or at least was a successful psychopath. He only recently got arrested and may have already succeeded in reproducing.

His personallity is the exact opposite of that of peterson and he doesn't come off as some intellectual. Instead of reading scientific studies andrew tate draws conclusions from his lived experience which isn't exactly the most reliable method but he still got a lot of things sortoff right.

Andrew tate realized that believing you have clinical depression is a self-fulfilling prophecy. His instinct to stay far away from the psychiatric system is healthy. This is another case of him intuitively arriving at the correct conclusion.

https://vintologi.com/threads/psychiatry.737/

Andrew tate does understand the struggle many males go through and speaking out about this alone is enough to get you branded as a misogynist due to him rejecting the notion of male privilege (going against feminism). This however does not mean that andrew tate actually cares much about actually helping males, instead he convinces males to sign up for his scammy financial discord service where he charges 50$ a months without actually giving any useful advice.

Andrew tate does not think he is doing anything wrong by taking advantage of desperate males, he views providing for himself and any children he have as much more important than the wellbeing of some stranger males he don't even know. Andrew tate did brag about having "double digits" number of children once but there isn't actually any evidence of this being true.

I do not think getting into kickboxing as a male is a great idea, it did work out decently for andrew tate but we do not see all the people who did the same thing and failed.
 

Claire_Lovely

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#13
About andrew tate
Andrew tate is or at least was a successful psychopath. He only recently got arrested and may have already succeeded in reproducing.
Andrew Tate is actually an example of what young men need to avoid. He's like most of the other self-help promoters but to a very extreme, with lots of victim blaming and selling young men moneymaking ideas that aren't actually helpful like Amazon FBA or trading cryptocurrency.

I used to follow Grant Cardone often but then I realized that these self-help people are extremely materialistic, and when Grant Cardone fired 1/3 of his staff instead of selling his 50 million USD jet, that's when I knew I would no longer support him.
 

Mr.Andrews

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#14
Andrew Tate is actually an example of what young men need to avoid. He's like most of the other self-help promoters but to a very extreme, with lots of victim blaming and selling young men moneymaking ideas that aren't actually helpful like Amazon FBA or trading cryptocurrency.

I used to follow Grant Cardone often but then I realized that these self-help people are extremely materialistic, and when Grant Cardone fired 1/3 of his staff instead of selling his 50 million USD jet, that's when I knew I would no longer support him.
I am not a moneymaxing expert but these people have a stench of "economic collapse" that is very strong. They make me think they are the vultures feasting on dead carcasses, they try to make a fortune for themselves scamming the masses, which is fine I guess, but I would stay away.
 

Claire_Lovely

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#15
I am not a moneymaxing expert but these people have a stench of "economic collapse" that is very strong. They make me think they are the vultures feasting on dead carcasses, they try to make a fortune for themselves scamming the masses, which is fine I guess, but I would stay away.
Spreading fear is definitely something many of them do, and I don't like that it's usually to try to come out of an advantage if there's a collapse. If there's a collapse we should be sharing and helping each other.
 
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