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Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#111

Post by gexla »

silveroriole wrote: post #101
gexla wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in reality, a grown man getting so furious at an infant that he fantasises about throwing it is just odd You are getting that backwards. In reality, people think that way. They get angry with kids. They may even think violent thoughts. Tragically, they may actually be violent. Any time you make a statement about what's weird about interactions between adults (especially parents) and kids, you should clarify that yo…

He is just describing “how things are”, not giving advice or telling you what you should do, in his self-help advice book about his “rules for life”? That’s surprising to me, I must say!

Heh, good point.

Okay, you're right. It's a self help book with advice. ;)

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#112

Post by ai_ia »

tareqak wrote: post #70
ai_ia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I used to watch Peterson's lecture on Youtube even before his rise. It brought me out of despair and my constant feeling of meaninglessness of life. To all people, who are downvoting Peterson, take some time to watch his classroom lectures on Youtube.

Do you not believe that some people might have already watched some of his classroom lectures, speaking tour lectures, and broadcast debates and then decided to downvote afterwards? Edit: tense

Well, it's not big assumption since there has been a continuous negative coverage about Dr.Peterson in the media. Also, recently a NZ bookstore banned his books.

But if people have watched his lectures and didn't like it, then I don't have any issues getting downvoted.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#113

Post by silveroriole »

wesammikhail wrote: post #109
silveroriole wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s nothing more to it, what place does it have in a self-help book, or in any book? Why bother saying it? What interest should it hold for me? This continual argument I hear from people that he’s just “describing how things are” seems self-defeating - it makes him sound as boring as someone who goes around saying “the sky is blue, the sun is hot”. Yeah, and? So what? There’s no point engaging with or listenin…

> Why bother linking the concepts to gender? Well, it looks like the main reason is that it offends people, and some people seem to find that worthwhile in and of itself. You´re missing the point. No one is (or at least I am not) saying that he is merely making a "factual observation" and that´s just that. But you are ASSUMING what his motives are as if you´re some type of mind reader. And of course his motives must…

I think you may be mixing me up with the original poster of this comment chain. I have only said that linking chaos/order to femininity/masculinity appears to have no point or meaning, not that I’m personally offended by it. In fact I don’t believe the original poster was offended either, and only said that some people are offended. You still haven’t managed to explain, at least to my satisfaction, what the point IS rather than harping on about “offence” you imagine I’ve taken. If your whole argument is that Peterson says they’re linked ‘because that’s how things are most of the time’, that is fine; I just don’t think that in itself is an interesting, original, worthwhile, or entirely correct observation, especially not when his aims are a) to provide self-help and advice or b) to provide a dull “truth is in the middle” argument. It appears, as your comments focus on, to provide much more fruitful grounds for claiming or decrying offence, rather than showing anything interesting about men, women, chaos, order, or anything else. Cheers.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#114

Post by rdtsc »

silveroriole wrote: post #83
lisardo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Jordan Pererson gets downvoted here, but recommend all critic to read “12 rules for life” themselves. This book helped me a lot.

I did read it. I decided not to take life advice from someone who writes, about a two-year-old child: “I picked him bodily off the playground structure, and threw him thirty feet down the field. No, I didn’t. But it would have been better for him if I had.” It’s a ‘joke’, but it’s a weird joke. I believe he thinks this over-aggression makes him seem dominant and powerful; in reality, a grown man getting so furious at…

> This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time,

There is something strange about that book being so popular.

I think one can argue that women have been socialized to want aggressive men so that becomes a common fantasy vs it's a biologically based phenomenon. I wonder if there is a way to compare how popular the book is in relation to how strongly stereotypical the education and culture is.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#115

Post by sridca »

lisardo wrote: post #49
squirrelicus wrote: post #35

Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning, 12 Rules for Life, and his many tens of hours of content on YouTube. If you're willing to entertain the idea for a brief moment that the Bible has any wisdom at all, his Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories is a must. I recommend them even if you aren't willing, in fact. They converted me, and i was a fairly nihilistic atheist for almost all of my thinking life.

I see Jordan Pererson gets downvoted here, but recommend all critic to read “12 rules for life” themselves. This book helped me a lot.

> This book helped me a lot

In what way did the book help you a lot? What do you now do differently in life?

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#116

Post by sridca »

silveroriole wrote: post #95
wesammikhail wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim. It would take a mere 10 seconds of googling to find the answer to that question as he is literally asked about it every few hours on twitter or in interviews. And every single time he explains it but it seems to fall on deaf ears. > I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint I personally don´t understand those people because they are not really…

Perhaps he shouldn’t bother linking order/chaos with gender at all. There are plenty of arguments you could make that order IS feminine - who, in the American viewpoint, traditionally keeps house, tidies up, makes peace, establishes family routine, is someone you come home to every night? And who is a risk-taker, a go-getter, the one who leaves the comfortable routine and embarks on unknown adventures? I know various…

Peterson only describes the masculine perspective on order vs chaos (and therein lies his bias). If you however include the moral and covert domains, order actually becomes feminine, as Ms. Arianna Stassinopoulos wrote: [quote]: ‘Women are the carriers of society’s values ... men are deviant in the sense that many of the qualities admired in them are also one’s that society has to regard with disapproval ... Women’s Lib portrays society and morality as a male invention to coerce and punish women ... [yet] women are a virtuous group seeking to impose their moral standards on men’. [endquote].

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#117

Post by [deleted] »

wesammikhail wrote: post #97
charliesome wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those who are somehow convinced he has ties to the despicable alt right, When he's hosting two prominent alt right figures as guests on his podcast [0], I think it's pretty fair to say that he has ties to the alt right. [0]: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/11164318379565834...

1. Ben Shapiro is alt-right. Yea and I shit cotton candy. https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-task-force-issue... 2. By that logic, Chris Wallace has ties to Russia too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHY8yG4mVzs 3. If Peterson is alt-right then so are you. Because I am pretty sure that in one way or another you associate yourself with someone who likes Peterson whether you know it or not. So you associate yo…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#118

Post by aphextron »

suniltejs wrote: post #72

Zen mind, beginner's mind - Shunryu Suzuki. I don't think it's life advice. But, it certainly had a profound impact on my life. As an entrepreneur, I found the best way to learn about life is to read biographies of successful people, especially the ones that speak of the transformations. Shoe Dog - Phil Knight Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein - Walter Isaacson

>Zen mind, beginner's mind - Shunryu Suzuki. I don't think it's life advice. But, it certainly had a profound impact on my life.

Just wanted to second this. One of the few books that has actually changed the way I view everything in life, and led to a years long deep dive into eastern philosophy.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#119

Post by godelmachine »

afarrell wrote: post #55
godelmachine wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about non violent communication only last week. Heard there’s a course and a workshop too on this. Very eager to master Non Violent Communivation coz more often than not I find myself in loss for the right word.

If you find yourself at a loss for words often, you might find it useful to talk to yourself more often, rehearsing how you would explain something. Showers are good for this. Parks are too, but there you should carry a handful of papers and occasionally pretend to look at them .

Thanks for your pointers.

Apart from the point to which you have replied, there’s one more I would like to add.

I am an Indian, and have a bit of an accent. Am trying to rub it off. I work for US clients and have observed that I can’t crack jokes as easily as they do, nor do I sound as natural in a friendly banter as well as they do. Also, in the excitement of the conversation, sometimes my American client mumble off something which I am unable to grasp, and which my Indian colleague is able to understand with surprising ease. (The fact that my Indian colleague is vernacular medium educated freaks me off even more)

Also, I am preparing for IELTS the second time (Band 8 in first attempt). I am particularly weak in listening. To remediate that, I listen to a BBC podcast everyday called “The Archers”. I miss out on at least 5 points in the podcast, unable to decipher what they meant. That’s one area I am trying to improve at.

The other one is speaking itself. To put in simple words, I am trying to make my speech as fluid as water. The person I am conversing with should be able to understand me effortlessly. Right now my speech is quite rigid and not that articulate. I scored band 8 in speaking in IELTS. To take things forward, I learnt about this shadowing technique from YouTube’s Emma’s channel and from someone on HackerNews. The bottom line of the shadow technique is, pick up a favorite show - and speak along with whatever the character says, do this for all episodes, and finish the series. One person on HN said that in order to perfect his Mandarin, he shadowed on Chinese TV series for 9 years straight.

In addition to this, I also record myself and speak on some random topic daily for 2 min(Topic is mostly from IELTS speaking tests). Go through the recording. Spot pronunciation / intonation/ articulation mistakes. Take one more go at the same topic. And see if there’s improvement.

Do you have any other ideas apart from these in your mind which can help me with improving my speech?

I am also planning to gobble up all books related to languages written by Steven Pinker.

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