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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?

#351

Post by sinuhe69 »

jeffrwells wrote: post #338

Here I had Claude rewrite his post into a 300 word version without all the filler. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d49d81d6-7aab-4730-9c3c-4... Which I’m sharing as a meta point…I think self help books are declining because there’s a better way to get the information without all the filler. But filler makes the books thick enough to sell at the airport Also - aren’t LLMs the ultimate choose your own adventure vers…

I’ve spent time to read the AI summary (which I normally never do) and the original (of course), and I can tell you the AI summary missed the most important point of the writing. I’d say what they are because it would defy the very purpose of what I’m trying to do.

But I can tell you that it’s enough to refute the AI fallacy many believe.

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

#352

Post by moffkalast »

DanielHB wrote: post #345
jeffrwells wrote: post #338

Here I had Claude rewrite his post into a 300 word version without all the filler. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d49d81d6-7aab-4730-9c3c-4... Which I’m sharing as a meta point…I think self help books are declining because there’s a better way to get the information without all the filler. But filler makes the books thick enough to sell at the airport Also - aren’t LLMs the ultimate choose your own adventure vers…

It is the same thing with documentaries. Youtube killed them because it is just a faster delivery of knowledge and information. For super-specific questions chatbots are even faster.

Idk, the average youtube video repeats the same question five times, dragging shit out with filler as much as possible to reach the required 10 minutes to qualify for two ad runs. It's become a horrible race to the bottom in terms of quality in recent years, though unlike TV documentaries at least it's possible to skip to the conveniently marked highlight these days.

There was this recent Tom Scott interview where he recommends people start their video with quesiton A, ask B before A is resolved, then when that happens, already ask C, etc. and solve C and D at the very end to keep the viewer engaged. Most people seem to just ask A over and over and over with filler in between until the viewer's head explodes.

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

#353

Post by XenophileJKO »

DanielHB wrote: post #345
jeffrwells wrote: post #338

Here I had Claude rewrite his post into a 300 word version without all the filler. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d49d81d6-7aab-4730-9c3c-4... Which I’m sharing as a meta point…I think self help books are declining because there’s a better way to get the information without all the filler. But filler makes the books thick enough to sell at the airport Also - aren’t LLMs the ultimate choose your own adventure vers…

It is the same thing with documentaries. Youtube killed them because it is just a faster delivery of knowledge and information. For super-specific questions chatbots are even faster.

In my opinion documentaries are too short anyway. I greatly prefer "The Great Courses" vs a 1-2 hour documentary.

There I can listen to a 6 hours about the Olmec civilization.

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

#354

Post by akoboldfrying »

lancewiggs wrote: post #155

The rise in sales of GLP-1 products also coincides with the decline in self-help books. Those products are highly effective at delivering some of the hardest self-help outcomes, so why buy a book when you can inject?

Great point actually.

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

#355

Post by myaccountonhn »

digitaltrees wrote: post #117
__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.

Hard disagree. I have read lots of books, participated in events and training seminars and had profound results in my life. My marriage is better because of what I learned, I am a better father and leader because of what I learned. And the fact that people sell things as part of that growth journey is how they support their ability to share the lessons and techniques.

Self-help books are so often ridiculued, and that ridicule is often well merited. At the same time there was a self-help book that basically gave me a whole different outlook on life, and cured my depression over night. So I can't deny they have a place and can really help people.

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

#356

Post by ruszki »

uberex wrote: post #228

4 hour work weeks is: Draw circle: Set up a highly successful business (prerequisite) Rest of owl: Delegate stuff (what the book says to do). It is pretty useless. Not suprised sales have declined especially since startups probably got harder since when it was written.

You can summarize any “self-help” books which I read in single pages. And most of them even in a few sentences without loosing any information from them.

One of the first which I’ve ever read fully was Getting Things Done after a Lifehacker article eons ago. The book had zero additional information compared to the article. Back then I didn’t know that these books information density was almost zero, and still is.

Last year I bought a book about eating well. I could read only the first half, because it repeated until then basically a single mantra: eat fermented and macronutrient rich food. This was repeated different ways, without adding anything to this summary. Sometimes literally the same sentences. Reasons were not provided, or was on the level “I knew somebody whom this helped”, without even trying to convince me that it was really this what helped them, and not anything else.

The dietary guidelines from the US is a way better read, and that’s free. Even the current, clearly politically distorted one.

Maybe, that’s the main reason. Free information is better or at least good enough. I haven’t learned anything from these kinds of books which was not available freely (and legally… because you can obviously get almost any books illegally).

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

#357

Post by XCSme »

__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.

Kind of, the 4-hour work workweek was one of the first book's I've read (I started late, was never interested), and it had many good insights that lead to me living a freer and more fulfilling life, that I might have not done otherwise.

Sure, you don't need to read an entire book to get the idea to do something, but that's way in which ideas get into your head and consciously or not, guide your steps in certain directions.

Of course, everything in self-help books should be taken with a grain of salt and also applied differently for each individual. It's just a way to get more ideas of what's possible, similar to travelling: it doesn't force you to do things in a certain way, it just shows you what's out there.

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

#358

Post by ralferoo »

Oh maybe his books are just seen as less relevant now. When times are good, people buy books like "4 hour work week" because they dream of a day when they might not have to work as much. When times are bad, and they face the very real risk of losing their job (if they haven't already), they have more pressing concerns like whether they can afford to buy groceries that week.

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

#360

Post by lotsofpulp »

kqr wrote: post #234
jasonfarnon wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because of what I learned." Do these books/seminars actually teach you something new about being married or a father, that you didn't know before? Like what? I always figured they were more about coaching, persuasion, convincing. To the extent I've scanned them, I never saw any kind of new fact, definitely not about something like being married.

I recently read Attia's Outlive which is about what sort of lifestyle makes one more resilient against diseases of old age. I'm not in a position to verify more than a few of the factual claims made by the author (and a lot of it sounds like mumbo-jumbo), but it was persuasive enough to get me to exercise for health (instead of performance at a specific event) and my life has gotten much easier since I came to that r…

>it was persuasive enough to get me to exercise for health

Why was this one guy more persuasive than the recommendation of basically every medical organization in the world?

Also, his correspondence with Epstein is quite damning.

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