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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?

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't laugh off the recommendation. That is a good book. I haven't read it personally but it affected my life deeply. My wife and I both grew up in physically violent homes. My mom read that book and taught me and my siblings the lessons along with others. And my children have only ever experienced shouting or physical violence when they went to their grandparents house. I understand you were using that phras…

Thank you for a thoughtful reply. To my reading you demonstrate that you listened, even though I didn’t give you much to work with considering my curt[1] comments, and these resources look helpful. But I don’t understand the problem with this phrase. Maybe it’s an ESL (second lang.) issue, because I have only read one author that I recall that has used this phrase (poverty of stimulus?). But to my mind it isn’t even…

You’re welcome and thanks for being open to the conversation and clarifying.

I get that an idioms in a second language can be hard. “I reach for my gun” is an idiom but among the more aggressive range. Not quite true fighting words (which a reasonable person would interpret as an indication of imminent threat) but close, especially with the amount of gun violence in the US.

But as I said I heard your valid point. I would be curious about your experience with leaders. What has your experience been so far? What have you identified as effective and ineffective traits?

*(notice I don’t say good and bad because those words often have a value judgement or moral implications and influences people’s cognition. If I say a “bad” boss someone might think corrupt, evil, dishonest etc. someone might think lazy, too friendly, stupid which don’t have the same moral posture).

I ask because I am always interested in learning about how leadership is received in the world so can improve.

One of the most challenging realizations in my life came from band of brothers the hbo show. Everyone thinks they are captain winters but I saw more similarities in myself to the ineffective leaders (especially the guy that disappeared randomly); and had to do a lot of work to improve

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

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>it's solely because that book made me more likable and personable. This is the part that gets me to have an almost allergic reaction. It feels like an almost homogenization of people's personalities. In my mind I picture it like this: business man A reads How to Win Friends and Influence People. Businessman B also reads it. Business man A meets B and see that they're doing the psychological tricks of the book and th…

> It's similar to my aversion to books like "The Game"

Note that The Game isn't a PUA manual, it's investigative journalism into the PUA scene.

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

#513

I work for a large online news publisher, one of the oldest in the US. Our traffic is down 50% in year. We likely won’t survive for much longer.

What do the AI vendors think is going to happen when the content creation ecosystem drops off a cliff? Do they realize they will drop with them? We are heading for a future where the internet is frozen in time with a cutoff date created when the LLM summaries started.

> What do the AI vendors think is going to happen ... ?

That's not this quarter's problem. Not even the current owners' problem. That's a problem for whomever is left holding the bag when they exit before the crash.

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