Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why doesn't advice work?

dynomight.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 334 posts

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#271

Post by knighthack »

debacle wrote: post #62
dotancohen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> winding parables and directed self-learning are incredibly impactful. For those of us with a spouse for whom direct advice is useless, please go on.

Ha. I have a very conversational thought process. Often times, giving my wife direct advice would give her anxiety or make her feel like I was giving her directions, rather than direction. "Maybe you should..." would be heard as "I want you to..." I've found that providing access to unopinionated information ("Here's a study related to that thing you are worried about"), bringing attention/space to the problem (witho…

No offence to your wife, but I find it incredibly exhausting to speak to people like this.

I agree that unsolicited advice is not good. But one should make exceptions for advice from spouses, who's vowed to be by your side, and who has your general best interests at heart - no matter how direct the advice is.

This seems more like a "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" kind of scenario, which is pointless sugarcoating (especially when you have a problem to solve, so you should be willing to listen to advice or take direct instructions if you yourself don't know how to solve it).

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#272

Post by buttercraft »

risenshinetech wrote: post #235
liotier wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a smart overwhelmed person who comes home tired and would love not to have to consider extra problems on top of family life and their demanding job. Plenty smart in a domain and just doesn't want to think in another is a common pattern.

As someone pointed out elsewhere, their very own comment makes this implication: > Smart people want to solve their own problems > Your spouse does not want to know how it works so that they can fix it themselves

It's context dependent. The situation is different if it's, say, a colleague instead of your spouse. I think people are reading way too much into that part of the comment.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#273

Post by debacle »

knighthack wrote: post #271
debacle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. I have a very conversational thought process. Often times, giving my wife direct advice would give her anxiety or make her feel like I was giving her directions, rather than direction. "Maybe you should..." would be heard as "I want you to..." I've found that providing access to unopinionated information ("Here's a study related to that thing you are worried about"), bringing attention/space to the problem (witho…

No offence to your wife, but I find it incredibly exhausting to speak to people like this. I agree that unsolicited advice is not good. But one should make exceptions for advice from spouses, who's vowed to be by your side, and who has your general best interests at heart - no matter how direct the advice is. This seems more like a "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" kind of scenario, which is pointless suga…

If you want I can give you her contact info and you can spend your next 25 years trying to change her. I've capitulated.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#274

Post by buttercraft »

jayd16 wrote: post #232
xeromal wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that implied other than the wife not being interested in learning a specific domain.

> Smart people want to solve their own problems > Your spouse does not want to know how it works so that they can fix it themselves

A good faith reading would be that you know your spouse well enough to recognize when this advice applies.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#275

Post by sowerssix »

stavros wrote: post #89
resource_waste wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at a bakery grand opening from an uneducated rural family. Plenty of their rural friends listened to the difficulties, wished them the best. Bring in the MBA + Industrial Engineer, and tell them some advice on processes, economics, and as a bonus, I was an Electrical Engineer for a few years so I had some advice on their oven problem. What is better? The person that says "You look beautiful", or "You have a pie…

Sometimes I want to hear that I'm beautiful, even with the fuzz in my hair.

You are beautiful, even with the fuzz in my hair.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#276

Post by kamaal »

efitz wrote: post #183

Hard lessons I've learned: 1. It doesn't matter what your title is, how much expert education, training, or experience you have, or even what hard lessons that you have learned: you are not an "expert" in an area unless you are invited in as an "expert". Put another way, unsolicited advice is unwelcome. 2. Smart people want to solve their own problems. Don't offer solutions. No one will feel empowered or much of a se…

>>Put another way, unsolicited advice is unwelcome.

You can replace advice with help and it would still be true.

Mostly people need to do things and see for themselves. Experience is felt, it can't be explained or thought.

>>Your spouse just wants to vent

Most people want empathy, not help. Like they know what they are doing and why. They just want people to understand listen and atleast pretend to understand.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#277

Post by kamaal »

efitz wrote: post #189
ryanmcbride wrote: post #98

The rules I have for myself when giving advice are: 1. Unsolicited advice is always criticism. 2. LISTEN TO THEIR ACTUAL PROBLEM ALL THE WAY. 3. Never tell someone what they should do, tell them what you would do in that situation. 4. Remember that the purpose of giving advice is just to illuminate options, not to have someone follow what you recommend to the letter. 5. As the advice giver understand that you could b…

> LISTEN TO THEIR ACTUAL PROBLEM ALL THE WAY. This is the key. People want to be heard, and also people don't necessarily divulge detail in the order you expect. The very last thing that they say may completely invalidate the solution you've been building in your mind as they've been speaking. Back in the mid 90's I was working support for Windows NT Server. In my area we had our heavy hitters- the issues that came u…

>>"I don't feel like the engineer listened to me before he solved my problem."

I worked in tech support in the mid 2000s. The crazy thing was the agent ratings were a delicate balance between customer ratings, resolve rate and call duration.

While its true some people just want to be heard, its also true some people just want their problem solved quickly.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#278

Post by throwawayq3423 »

yibg wrote: post #170
throwawayq3423 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advice is tied to the individual giving it. What worked for them might work for you, but it worked given their circumstances, not yours.

The article touches on this too, from personal experience it seems like the likelihood of someone taking advice depends on both sides: - How good is the advice? specific > generic, personalized > general, actionable > not actionable, objective > biased etc, from someone knowledgeable > random person with no specific knowledge / expertise in the subject. - How receptive is the person receiving the advise? Was the advi…

I've always laughed at tony robbins giving advice to 40k people in a stadium all at once. Unless it's "make you bed in the morning" level generality, it can't possibly apply to everyone at once. You need to know who you are talking to first before you can give them real advice.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#279

Post by defrost »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #278
yibg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article touches on this too, from personal experience it seems like the likelihood of someone taking advice depends on both sides: - How good is the advice? specific > generic, personalized > general, actionable > not actionable, objective > biased etc, from someone knowledgeable > random person with no specific knowledge / expertise in the subject. - How receptive is the person receiving the advise? Was the advi…

I've always laughed at tony robbins giving advice to 40k people in a stadium all at once. Unless it's "make you bed in the morning" level generality, it can't possibly apply to everyone at once. You need to know who you are talking to first before you can give them real advice.

Robbins would likely laugh at your comment for getting him completely arse backwards.

He's not there to preach to the many, well, not yet at least, he's there for the fewer to self select out and come forward to next level grooming.

The Race Track advice grift works by giving 100 prospects each one of ten horses as a sure bet; at the end of a ten horse race 10 punters come forward wanting more advice, each convinced they've now got inside information on the next sure thing.

Robbins isn't far removed, his purpose is to gather a group of the gullible who will all pay for the most insipid generic advice deliverable and select a core of true beleivers from that group who will invest even more than just the books.

He's not there to give "real advice", he's there to make bank.

Post reply on HN