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Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

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Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#51

Post by jaimie »

ryandrake wrote: post #44
aerhardt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say soon but what you just described is still sci-fi as far as I can tell.

I wonder, if the technology will actually get to the point where it can AI/Remix up a bunch of TV shows or movies that are as high quality / nonslop as the original, and if that would satisfy me. Let's say I'm living in the past and think Star Trek TNG and the X-Files was peak TV. If I could just hit enter and generate an in-all-ways-believably-authentic episode, maybe I just wouldn't watch anything else. Would it ma…

Nothing, Forever was basically this idea applied to Seinfeld. The video quality was low, but some of the ways it captured the same absurdities as Seinfeld was remarkable at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing,_Forever

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#53

Post by curuinor »

__alexander wrote: post #50

Personally, I see the self-help industry dying because people are starting to realize that it’s just a network of individuals selling products, promoting each other’s products, and creating new avenues to sell more products. I refer to it as the “self-help mafia.” Tim Ferriss kind of created it.

Dale Carnegie created it, Tim Ferriss is a century too late to point as origin.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#54

Post by PaulHoule »

plagiarist wrote: post #49
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are some good things in the 4-hour Work Week but the concept as a whole is problematic: e.g. Tim Ferris himself has more like a 400-hour work week. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a right wing scam. There is a psychotechnology that people call "magic" but The Secret and Think and Grow Rich won't teach you it.

I liked Ferris explaining that you can validate a market exists by serving ads pretending you already have a product. What a scumbag. Isn't the rest of the book just drop shipping and selling supplements with high margins? I recall snippets of a manual for unethical but mostly legal small business between stories of people making money on such practices.

I like his description of how you could just call up an expert on the phone and often get a quick answer to any question they can answer quickly. I'd learned that one myself.

Like it or not a lot of successful businesses have some bodies buried somewhere, particularly those that have been successful in two-sided markets such as online communities. There have been legendary successes in marketing enterprise software that didn't quite exist but I can say it didn't work when I tried it.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#55

Post by mrheosuper »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

>Yet a lot of people make and watch serious educational and informational videos

a picture is worth a thousand words. Of course your text article can have pictures, but how can you sure you include all the "useful" pictures. Then there is animation which is impossible to do with static picture.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#57

Post by cindyllm »

PaulHoule wrote: post #45
RajT88 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rich Dad Poor Dad is a right wing scam. I think he was actually saying that by calling it fiction, lol.

Yeah, but it's the worst of the four. I remember his advice that you should buy a rental property which is cashflow positive after the mortgage payment on day one. (As opposed to profitable considering that you're building equity) These were just not on the market except for one that had 8 section 8 apartments and would have driven me crazy trying to manage as a bleeding heart who cares about people.

[dead]

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#58

Post by mathgeek »

neutronicus wrote: post #29
vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

The right 15 seconds of video can be extremely helpful with household tasks. I'm thinking specifically of super-tactile ones like getting such-and-such panel off the car or appliance so that you can get at the bit you're looking to replace. Those can really be worth a thousand words. Of course I'd prefer a blog post with many looping, silent 5-15 second gifs and no extraneous like-and-subscribe and life-story-deliver…

> Of course I'd prefer a blog post with many looping, silent 5-15 second gifs and no extraneous like-and-subscribe and life-story-delivery. But c'est la vie.

This feels like something you could vibe code up (creating the blog posts from YouTube videos). Fascinating times.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#59

Post by cm2012 »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

A certain portion of people just prefer learning from video instead of text.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#60

Post by charcircuit »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

YouTube handles distribution. Some people search for information by typing their question in the YouTube search box. Whatever article you wrote won't surface there. You have to post to many social media sites if you want to show up everywhere people are looking.
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