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Most advice is pretty bad

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Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#81

Post by AtlasBarfed »

The issue with a lot of advice is that the world is insane. A lot of very very straightforward practical advice would make you a social outcast if you did it to a degree that it moves the needle.

For example, financially it makes PHENOMENAL sense to save almost everything you make right out of school and don't buy things or take on loans. Live like a hermit. Get the compounding interest going as fast as you can, early as you can.

But then you're a boring, lame, cheap person that gets backburnered as a second class friend for YOLO stuff, or even worse you won't be as appealing to mates.

Likewise, don't drink/smoke/do drugs/eat like shit when you are young. You get decades on the backend of life of FAR higher quality life (like, you are basically an average 20 year old in health into your 50s and 60s). But... again, that marks you as boring.

What people want is this amazing insightful advice that has no consequences to implement.

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#82

Post by cowpig »

polote wrote: post #12

VC give pretty bad advice in general. Their advice is the the description of founders they want to invest in. Most of the founders they give money to, more or less follow the advice they give (not directly, but because they have been selected like that). But as all vc most of their companies fails, showing that the advice in fact doesn't work. Don't forget that if they really knew what to do to start a successful com…

I think that a lot of advice from VCs is bad, but only because a risk profile that makes sense for an individual VC investment is completely reckless for that individual.

Assuming utility grows linearly with wealth (which it doesn't: a $100M exit is not going to improve your life 20x more than a $5M exit, which makes this worse), the kelly criterion[1] puts the amount of your personal resources you should optimally invest into something that has a small chance at mooning very low. Which is what the VC is doing. But the founder is not.

But ok I'm on a tangent and I think I disagree with your post otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#84

Post by felixhammerl »

VCs offer bad advice, because most of them are successful not because of the ruthless elimination process that is a startup, but despite. Meaning that they have no idea why they are successful. Take this example: Let's take 10 identical startups with identical traits doing the same thing in 10 places of the US. Some die because they burn money quicker, b/c SF salary is expensive. Others die because they are in rural US and don't get exposure to the right people. Or they succeed because lower cost of income allows for longer runways so they are still alive at the right time, as opposed to the SF startup. Or they might have a neighbor who knows someone who knows someone.

All of those that make it in the end will think they made it because they were smart and hard working and what not. Truth is that hard work and smarts are the lower entry barrier of success, not what takes you all the way to the top.

But then again VCs are mostly self-congratulating morons who will attribute their success to anything but luck.

Case in point: Anything from Sam Altman or Paul Graham.

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#85

Post by atoav »

adventured wrote: post #78
WJW wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most advice is quite specific for people in certain circumstances and useless or even harmful for people outside those circumstances. Should you save save up for retirement and be generally financially sensible? Of course, but there are plenty of exceptions. For example, for the terminally ill it is terrible advice, and neither is the traditional "save 10% of income and invest in index funds" advice applicable to new…

> Should you save save up for retirement and be generally financially sensible? ... For example, for the terminally ill it is terrible advice No it's not terrible advice. People that are terminally ill will quite commonly have loved ones that can benefit after their passing from their being financially prudent rather than spendthrift. That can involve children, young adults, widow/ers, and all manner of contexts (dis…

As someone's loved one I'd rather have them go broke and inherit nothing than see them choose death to give me money.

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#86

Post by namelessoracle »

_jal wrote: post #36
MattGaiser wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on whether the field is an arms race. In plenty of areas, common advice is quickly implemented by most competitive participants. See college admissions or even getting jobs after university. At one point founding a charity was considered evidence of leadership. By my graduating class for high school, half the class had a charity. The person I know who has been the best at admissions has founded 4. But no…

> Or consider unlimited vacation for developers. Is there any evidence that developers (or anyone else with "unlimited vacation") take more time than they did previously? I've assumed that was more akin to "open offices" - selling a cost-cutting measure as something hip.

Best of both worlds is guaranteed vacation with unlimited sick in my experience. People for sure take their vacation, and people slip in days to not be around when they need a break and need an extra 3 day weekend.

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#87

Post by tpoacher »

Favourite quote I've seen on this:

"Most advice is basically people mistaking correlation for causation."

(quote by Leo Polovets, some random datascience guy from twitter, no idea if original or not)

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#89

Post by KerryJones »

DarylZero wrote: post #73
KerryJones wrote: post #55

I agree with the title and disagree with the article. I was hoping the article was going to talk about how much advice comes from survivorship bias and people's general inability to see the difference between cause and correlation of what they are recommending and true effect. On this subject, I could rant. As others have pointed, "non-obvious advice" doesn't inherently have any reason it's better. The vast majority…

> Take diet. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who said salads were unhealthy. I believe most know that they would lead to less heart problems in the US, they are cheaper, and would help lose weight. Eating things doesn't help you lose weight.

A vast amount of dietary research and dieticians disagree with you. Hilariously, eating things you're allergic to causing you to get sick/not eat/throw up is one of the most amusing versions of this.

Re: Most advice is pretty bad

#90

Post by DarylZero »

KerryJones wrote: post #89
DarylZero wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take diet. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who said salads were unhealthy. I believe most know that they would lead to less heart problems in the US, they are cheaper, and would help lose weight. Eating things doesn't help you lose weight.

A vast amount of dietary research and dieticians disagree with you. Hilariously, eating things you're allergic to causing you to get sick/not eat/throw up is one of the most amusing versions of this.

"Amusing" but worthless to say.
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