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No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#41

Post by ineedasername »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

So what you’re saying is that I should Always Be Grocery Shopping? Because you never know who you’ll meet there.

No, don’t worry about taking the time to reply & say that of course that’s what you mean. I’m already halfway through dictating a blogpost on my way to the grocery store right now. Thank you, I never would have seen it as the rich business networking venue it clearly is without your insight.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#42

Post by redler »

enos_feedler wrote: post #4

Out of the 3 "Insight Porn" examples linked in the article, I think the Paul Graham essay seems out of place. I know I know, this is hacker news. Yet another person sticking up for pg. But I just don't think this essay (or others) is really trying to boil some dream/goal into steps. In fact, in the "How to get startup ideas" referenced in this post, pg says: "So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an i…

It’s the “some of us just have midichlorians” insight.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#43

Post by 202206241203 »

feintruled wrote: post #23

His six hour day thing reminds me of a wheeze a manager tried in my old company when it was coming up to crunch time. He sent an 'inspirational' email where he said that if we all were to simply work an extra few hours after work each day, then four hours on each of Saturday and Sunday, then - voila - we would magically find ourselves with the equivalent of an 8-day week. I don't think many took him up on this. Thoug…

"Are you guys working?

Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson.

Could you, um, work any harder than this?"

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#44

Post by philipodonnell »

ycombinete wrote: post #2

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis . Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in p…

"Epiphanic rush" is such a accurate but bittersweet term for this. It must be so ingrained in human psychology from the days of shamans, prophets and sages.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#45

Post by aparks517 »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

"Get lucky" is solid advice, but you've also got to give luck something to work with. I think your overnight success started a long time ago, at least as far back as when you showed your manager you weren't a bozo.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#46

Post by hammock »

closedloop129 wrote: post #37

>When I’m consuming non-fiction content, I try to write down specific experiments I can try that put the things I “learned” into practice. Could you turn this into a social network where people cooperate to do these experiments? It could be used to figure out which ideas are helpful and it could be used to help people when they are stuck implementing an idea.

We could get the government to fund the experiments with research dollars, and build institutions around the country where people run these experiments with young people eager to learn and apply science and get experience with such things. Then the results could be published first in science journals for the other institutions, and then the best ones written up in popular book form for the masses to consume.

Wait a minute…

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#47

Post by ChildOfChaos »

Torwald wrote: post #15
yamrzou wrote: post #8

My guess is that a big chunk of the "insight porn" and self-help landscape would fade away if it was subject to a data driven evaluation. Given a piece of advice or a self-help book, how many people did actually change their behaviour after reading it? And did the change persist long-term? Unfortunately, such data is not available.

Tony Robbins says in one of his audios (can't remember which, otherwise I would link), that 80% of the books he sold are just collecting dust, because people just buy them in order to pat themselves on the back for having done something for their personal development.

Ironically said in a self-help audio course itself.

I feel like a lot of that content seems to mention similar, either in a slight moment of self-awareness that their content will likely j just be that or perhaps in a slightly deluded way to try and suggest that this course / book is somehow different.

Content creators make a lot of money and have nice careers selling all this stuff, even streamers, how many of them would actually spend hours watching someone else's stream a day? Most of them wouldn't go near that stuff, but they happily stream for hours a day have thousands of people watch them and consume the content then cash that check.

It's a great life for the creator, not so much the consumer.

The same is with productivity YouTubers or self help authors, it's a create business to be in, but really your just selling out the other person.

It was not lost on me, when a popular self development podcast host, a few years ago talked about how they set up there twitter and social accounts to post via a third party app, because they absolutely must not see the timeline or engage in it in any way. These people are happy to use to tools out there to profit and capture other peoples attention, but guard there own so tightly because they know how important it is. That is likely a better lesson than anything they where actually 'tweeting' about.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#48

Post by bombcar »

fouric wrote: post #33

I really like this idea! You can find it in all sorts of places. Here's one in video games: there are a lot of League of Legends videos by a channel called "Skill Capped" that each claim to have "one neat rule" or "5 mistakes to watch out for" to help you get better at the game. The only problem? The "one rule" is something like "don't do this thing unless you know that there's an 80% chance that it'll work" - and th…

That's actually actionable - don't do this thing.

The key is that you'll see the pros doing it because they can recognize the 80% areas, but if you can't, you shouldn't even try to do it, because you're likely putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Part of the problem is not all games can be broken down into certain definitive chunks you can work on directly (turn-based ones often do have these).

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#49

Post by suoduandao2 »

EmilyHughes wrote: post #19

Why does everything have to be some kind "porn" nowadays. Does anybody seriously think this is funny?

I suspect we use 'porn' as a shorthand for 'hypernormal stimuli' and I suspect we have so much of it because humans have fewer evolved defenses against manipulation by hypernormal stimuli on the internet.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#50

Post by bombcar »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #5

I read a story where the main protagonist ran a business who did nothing but provide solutions to people. They would come in, pay a fee, and he would dispense a solution to their problem that would make things better if only the advice was followed. I thought it delightful. A problem I have that I can simply ask for a solution and get it? That would be great. The reason these bad actors exist is that they recognize t…

Another part is nobody wants the real advice, because it's often hard.

See how many diet books are sold, and see how few people actually successfully lose weight, even though the advice boils down to "stop eating so much".

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