"AI has become good enough at writing bullshit at scale that many bullshit industries are struggling"
Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
261–270 of 513 posts
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#262Fiction books to follow soon? Will kids still sit down and read an assigned book when they can just prompt "generate a movie of Shelley's Frankenstein, faithful to the source, except as required by my_movie_preferences.md". Reading the text may become as rare as learning ancient Greek to read the Odyssey.
This may well happen, but the fraction of people still capable of absorbing original texts will have a tremendous advantage over people who never learned to think.
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#263> 2025 was the first big drop, 2026 looks more severe, and the only thing that’s really changed in that timeframe is the acceleration of AI.
It all hinges on this statement. But I’m not sure it’s really AI that’s doing it, and not just a contributing factor. There’s higher cost of living, inflation, economic uncertainty, seemingly looming financial crisis, etc. A lot of impactful things happened!
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that is not what the book teaches at all. Sometimes people can’t take the advice of “just be a better person and care about other people” unless it’s explained to them more specifically and anchored to their goals. It’s not because they are inauthentic, it’s because they are lacking skills and understanding.
I actually crashed out semi-recently about this exact thing, quit church and all and was genuinely surprised when the people who were speaking politeley to me reached out in a genuine, non-public and non-coerced way. I don't think the word "inauthentic" quite captures why people react negatively to this sort of communication. At least part of it comes from the fact that this particular style of "kindness-is-cool-code…
Culturally many Australians have an ingrained and likely healthy aversion to feeling they are being "handled" or manipulated in some manner.
Likely stems from a hundred and fifty odd years of the "always British" types swanning it over the "this is where we live and we love it" crowd.
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#265Personally, 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.
> starting to realize
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#266[dead]
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#267Personally, 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.
> the self-help industry
About 15 years ago my friend showed me this video of a "self-help" guy he was impressed with and inspired by.
..it was over 30 minutes of rambling that sounded like it makes senses but meant nothing and lead nowhere.
Looking back it was like listening to how early LLMs were: Just long strings of random words and vague sentences without actually saying anything.
Or how Saruman's power of the tongue was described as.
It's depressing and obvious to see how many people could be misled by this kind of charlatanism.
AI if done right could cut a lot of crap from human society.
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"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.
> Do these books/seminars actually teach you something new about being married or a father, that you didn't know before?
Maybe you were born with all the knowledge necessary to be a good father/husband, but I certainly wasn’t. I imagine most people just have their parents to go off of, and we all know what a can of worms that can be.
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you share an easy-to-understand example for someone who is similarly highly sceptical of self-help products?
How to Win Friends and Influence People helped my career a ton. I stopped having to job search and started getting pulled up as people I knew from work advanced they would bring me with them. I haven't had to job hunt in 9 years and it's solely because that book made me more likable and personable. It made me enjoy life more too, because I have a diaspora of cool and interesting connections who would go to bat for me…
I too read the book in my younger years, and it helped me a lot with making friends and my career. However, the book itself is filled with some terrible advice for communicating with people. I realized that as an older person. But as a young person it filled me much needed confidence. Like many of these books, the actual advice is crap, but I think it gives people the confidence they need to change something in their lives they are not happy with.
I highly recommend the podcast: If Books Could Kill. They have an episode on this book.
Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
#270Earlier 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.
> Do these books/seminars actually teach you something new about being married or a father, that you didn't know before? Maybe you were born with all the knowledge necessary to be a good father/husband, but I certainly wasn’t. I imagine most people just have their parents to go off of, and we all know what a can of worms that can be.
I'd wager that most people have just their parents to go off of and a few recallibrate using their own experiences, learning, and introspecting about them. Those are the few to whom books and seminars are useful as sources.
I think, for a large number of people, self-help (especially the short form high intensity style content that influencers post is just "content" to "consume" - a form of cheap entertainment that's thrown out almost as soon as it's consumed. There's no enduring change. That takes time and an semi-innate desire to change. Then, all these things become sensible and useful.
I'm not a big fan of Ferris but I'm willing to bet that someone who sits down with one of his books and works through it slowly applying the lessons to his or her own life will see some kind of change as opposed to the typical person who just asks an LLM to summarise the book or a video about it and then decides that they've changed.