My rule of thumb is usually, I don't want to listen to somebody who got rich/successful by teaching other people how to get rich/successful. They have become rich before, and then teach others just because they enjoy doing it.
When I read self-help advice by Mark Cuban, or Benjamin Franklin, I tend to trust that a lot more than advice from Tony Robbins or Richard Kyosaki.
That is not to say I'd never listen to their message.. but I take everything they say with a big grain of salt.
> I don't want to listen to somebody who got rich/successful by teaching other people how to get rich/successful
I heard someone describe this as 'incestuous'. Web hosting review sites that make money from links to the hosts come to mind. But yes, I also get a red flag whenever seeing someone making money by telling others how to do so.
Like say, The Four Hour Work Week? It got so much buzz I'm glad I was able to borrow a copy and see what it was all about. Just as glad I didn't buy it too. His best example is to write a book that may provide insight into shortcuts.
If what you say cannot be proven or disproven, I'm not interested, even if all of it might be true
Although a good starting point, that's a disappointing place to end up. The scientific method was a monumental leap forward in epistemology, but it is not the alpha and omega of knowledge.
I think he addresses this a little at the bottom with “I do have a problem with people who claim to have done SCIENCE and then when you dig in, turn out to have done no such thing.”
Calling something science is pretty much the way of giving it prestige these days. This is bad for the reputation of science, but it’s also bad for the reputation of useful non-scientific kinds of knowledge. Lots of good advice isn’t clearly falsifiable or rigorously research-based.
Calling something 'science' actually fell out of vogue just a few short years ago. I believe 'organic' is the new way. I just heard what I was told was 'organic music' yesterday.
(I started to wonder what this meant. Obviously sound waves are not composed of organic OR non-organic molecules besides perhaps air, so perhaps we should fall back to the commercial definition. Did they grow the wood for their violins without pesticides, and use sustainability grown trees for their sheet music? Or do they include DRM that prevents them from being played on stereos powered with anything other than solar?)
Agreed that many people claiming "SCIANCE!" don't really know what science is. Most scientists don't, either.
That's not meant as a slam against all those other scientists who just aren't as smart as brilliant ol' me. Interest in epistemology is different than a passion for protein folding, and one can effectively apply the methods without diving deep into the philosophy.
In the New Organon , (wherein Francis Bacon basically invented the scientific method IMHO), Bacon outright says there will be millions of ground soldiers applying science to the world without understanding deeply the epistemology of their actions. He saw that as natural and unavoidable considering how foreign, unnatural, and downright unpleasant the scientific worldview is to a normal human being. Experience seems to bear out his prediction - in fact, all we have is gradations in the ability to apply scientific thinking. Nobody does it all the time.
> Lots of good advice isn’t clearly falsifiable or rigorously research-based.
And I have absolutely no problem with that. When my dad told me "son, you don't have to step into every puddle to know you'll get wet," I didn't need a rigorous proof of the statement. When my wife says "wash the canned beans & chick peas before you cook them" I do it without asking (as I have been trained to).
Well I certainly don't feel like that. Cooking only became interesting to me when I realized there are real answers to the "why do it like that" question.
Why rinse the chick peas? To wash away preservatives? Because the slime is off-putting? Because the extra starch will otherwise over-thicken the dish? Dude, how can you NOT want to know?
I think the author's point is that an unfound and irrefutable truth is not interesting. If a person holds a belief and is unwilling to accept evidence to the contrary, then that person is not interested in truth. If a person holds a belief and has made no attempt to verify it with evidence, then that person is human ... but I, for one, am suspicious of their motives proportionally to their conviction.
In the context of how I wrote it, I meant if you're providing me an explanation/solution to a problem, you better be able to prove that is indeed the case. Telling me that "concentrate on your chakras to reduce your stress" won't cut it. Mentioning the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atharvaveda or translations of it, isn't good enough either. As far as I know no chakras have been found during any dissection nor have we found any evidence of them indirectly. So any claims made on the basis of chakras are invalid as far as I'm concerned. I would be open to interpreting chakras as aspects of our personality if someone can provide a reasonable basis for them.
>" As far as I know no chakras have been found during any dissection nor have we found any evidence of them indirectly. So any claims made on the basis of chakras are invalid as far as I'm concerned."
Were someone to dissect you, they would not find your concern, or any other mental state (or your personality either). However, it would be absurd to argue that therefore you have no concern on that basis.
"Concentrate on your breathing to reduce your stress" suffers from the same problem. Upon dissection, there would be no breathing. Furthermore, "concentrate" is no less problematic than "chakra" within a logical-positivist framework.
None of which is to deny that many life coaches may be FOS -- I found Ehrenreich's description of them in Bait and Switch consistent with my observations.
Ah ha - but there are so many things that cannot be "proven" to be true, yet are still helpful. Stress relief techniques are a case in point - most of us probably try lots of techniques and ultimately end up using what works best for us. There are also complications - e.g. meditation might work best for most people, but I personally may not have the time (or the patience) to do it properly.
Hence, I am fine with being given a non-scientific list of stress relief techniques - as long as they are not harmful or time-consuming, then I would be willing to try them.
> Stress relief techniques are a case in point - most of us probably try lots of techniques and ultimately end up using what works best for us.
Wouldn't it be awesome if you could input variables like your personality, lifestyle, and preferences and get a reliable list of stress-relief techniques along with the probability that they'll work for you? Maybe it's impossible with our current standard of knowledge but surely you can imagine an advanced civilization that can do it by simulating "you" inside a virtual machine or just solving trillions of linear equations for every variable that defines you. What isn't provable today may be provable (within bounds) tomorrow.
Unfortunately, the problem today is that the moment someone shows that X works for Y in condition Z, everyone starts trying to sell X to everyone else for every problem.
First, no physical science has "provable" results - they are merely correlational. Second, such a study would have a gargantuan cost, merely for results that would have limited practical use. An expert in stress relief can probably come up with a very accurate list of techniques for someone that would help them out. Using your approach only gives a small optimization on this.
However, scientists should investigate why stress relief techniques work, and that investigation may overlap a bit.
I have no trouble with the scientific method, in fact I'm a science fanboy. I do maintain some discomfort with your <edit: my interpretation of your> stance though.
I hope my first point doesn't come across as nitpicking - it's not meant to. I bring it up because it seems to be the primary way that people who think they understand science, but don't, perceive science. It is that you seem to value things that can be proven true. Nothing in science can be proven true - that's why it's so uncomfortable to so many people, and in fact is why the scientific method was such an epistemological break from the past. All we can do is disprove things. My problem with holistic medicine or chakras or chi isn't that dissection hasn't found evidence. It's that the theory/model/worldview isn't formulated in a way that can be falsified and therefore the the views have no meaning in a scientific context.
Note that I didn't say they were false from a scientist's view. They simply aren't meaningful - they're content free. A scientist wouldn't actually say they're true or false: a scientist would say that science has nothing to say about them.
The second issue I have with your position is related to the first point but slightly different: I think it's incorrect to label as false models that have no evidence. For example, say a holistic medicine practitioner relents and formulates one of his practices in a falsifiable way. Tests are done and no beneficial effect is shown. I think the appropriate response is that the model is unlikely to be true, not that the model is false. We simply haven't disproved the null hypothesis yet - that's not to say it won't or can't be done. The scientific method just adds 9s to the certainty. It is never certain.
In short, a scientist is profoundly and radically humble.
"Figure 3. Just as the distribution of pheochromocytoma correlates with the distribution of sympathetic ganglions, the distribution of germ cell tumors correlates with undifferentiated cells in human body which are likely to be involved in the regulation of growth control and physiology as part of the ‘inner meridian system’. This distribution also correlates well with the chakra system used in yoga and acupuncture, suggesting a unified structural basis for chakra system and meridian system"
This is a subject that resonates with me for deeply personal reasons.
One of the arguments that supporters of such coaches, and the coaches themselves use is that knowledge is valuable only if recipients of that knowledge value it. The extension of this argument is that a recipient of knowledge will not value it unless he or she has parted money to obtain it.
One phrase I hear tossed around a lot in Singapore is, "You must sow before you reap."
What really irks me is how these gurus/coaches really know how to position themselves as individuals who are returning to the community.
So, I've been thinking whether there is a way to flip this model around. If someone is truly seeking to help the community and truly believes that the seeker of knowledge needs to pay a price before they can extract full value of imparted knowledge, then this model, that I'm hoping I eventually can personally implement, should not be too hard to digest.
The model: The guru/coach creates a program with very clear milestones and deliverables. The student pays a lump sum which is held in escrow by a third party (e.g. charity, educational institution...).
When the student meets all the milestones and deliverables, at the end of the program, the money is returned to the student. If the student fails to achieve any milestone, the money is donated to a charity. If the student partially achieves the goals set in the beginning, then teacher and student need to sit down and determine what went wrong and reach a consensus on the amount returned to the student and amount given to charity.
I've shared this model with some friends and I do believe there are points that still need to be worked out, but I sincerely hope there will be a day when people who seek to better themselves are not impoverished for the personal aggrandizement of others.
The worst is being compelled by an employer to endure such presentations. If you ever find yourself in this position, you have strong evidence that you have failed in your career.
I use to consider as truth what other people says for a limited time frame, and test it in real life. I don't care about the person making money or not, just about if what the person does improve my life or not, or gives me an insight.
When I was a kid I used to be the "know it all" rational child witch only believes what it could understand, but as the Buddhist say "if you make the wrong questions, you get the wrong answers", we know it today as "garbage in, garbage out", no matter how powerful is your processing unit or the processing time if you supply it with bad data, you get bad conclusions.
I continue trying to understand "everything", but the time frame of "suspended belief" lets me to experiment without judging. If you rationalize too much you could become the ancient Greek that despised experience. The current ideas(beliefs) in your mind fight against possible new ones.
e.g. Some people(most of them) suffer from being wrong, your "ego" responds with pain, you could feel hurt if someone publicly prove you are wrong, so the obvious solution for your brain to protect you is to put down external ideas. Everybody wants to change the world, nobody(few) wants to change herself.
Peddling something that amounts to psychotherapy. without a grounding in science is clearly suspect. Not necessarily bogus as some belief systems like religion, which have no scientific basis, can have ends which justify the means.
These people are promising some kind of transformative process which feeds on an individuals desire for change. They are literally parasites feeding on the desperate, but it is important to remember parasites aren't necessarily* bad, just unpleasant to those of us who don't need their services.
Most coaches are full of crap. So are most parents, teachers, therapists, doctors, lawyers, tax accountants, designers, programmers, consultants and freelancers of every variety, and anyone who ever talks about, writes about, or even thinks the word "entrepreneur."
But oh, no, HN hates business coaches especially because of the sneaking feeling that they're tricked by approaches that HN readers cannot understand. Those tricksy life coaches, they'll never get one over on us! All advice should be free! All you have to do is read once to understand! They can't fix your life if you make no effort therefore they are bogus! If they cannot quantify and prove the vaguaries of the human heart, more so than the best scientists in the world, they are a lying thieving scumbag!
Please.
The original essay is fine-ish, except that it states that the mere presence of good speaking skills means you should suspect a person. The mere presence of a statement like that in a blog post means you should suspect a person. When a person makes a statement like that, you should be on your guard about everything else the person has to say (write), because that indicates a sweeping generalization and no small amount of personal/professional jealousy.
Oh yes, witty mnemonics, they're a sign that evil is afoot!
But so is showing that you belong to a community and attempting to gain its respect as "one of us" by loudly attacking a presumed common enemy.
See, bloggers just want your money and attention too.
Most coaches are full of crap. So are most parents, teachers, therapists, doctors, lawyers...
I believe the point being made is that "life coaches" are exceptionally good at disguising that they are full of crap.
If you force yourself to do the hard work of understanding a dry technical text, filling in the missing details yourself, BS will stand out. If you smile and nod to a charismatic speaker, it wont.
Yes, downvote me. That just shows that you prefer to be tricked by people who are putting on a show as being "one of you."
Where, I ask you, is the science that proves that there is a correlation between speaking skills and valuelessness? Or witty mnemonics and an intent to trick or defraud?
This essay, and the comments, are more of the same deception that the OP accuses a whole industry of. It's just that the call is coming from inside the house.
It's easy to find a good business or life coach. Ask them to provide references of at lest 3 past clients. Ask the references what their lives were like before and what their lives are like now. If there is a significant difference, then go for it.
Problem with references is that they're not accurate. People who seek out a life-coach are already working to improve themselves. Along with seeing the life-coach they will make other changes to their life that might improve things, and they will blindly attribute the positive changes to that paid experience.
You can see this in people who were criminals then become deeply religious. Their lives "improve" after becoming devout in their faith because they stop abusing substance, smoking, gambling and associating with other criminals. What the dogma gave them is just some codified rules, no one else needs to join the religion to reap the benefits of discipline, but to the practitioners, their faith is the end all be all and they have evidence to prove "it works".
> What the dogma gave them is just some codified rules, no one else needs to join the religion to reap the benefits of discipline, but to the practitioners, their faith is the end all be all and they have evidence to prove "it works".
I wouldn't make such a sweeping statement about everybody who became religious, even if you're only talking about criminals. You have no way of knowing this.
I am not talking about religion alone, that was only an example, take any other "system" to organize human behavior that doesn't directly credit the human adopter, and it's the same.
Another example is people who swear by military service as the only way to become disciplined.
On the other hand, people may quit alcohol consumption based on brief news accounts about the results of scientific research at Harvard Medical School. Such people have little more first hand evidence for modifying their behavior than a person acting out of spiritual devotion.
When the effect of one person reading USA Today is identical to the effect of another person's reading of The Feast:90, then there is no difference from a pragmatic point of view...even though we are inclined to judge one logical and the other dogmatic.
If the USA Today reader claimed his life is better because he reads USA Today, I would judge him just as irrational.
But what usually happens is that the person reading, usually secondhand, research publications makes the changes in behavior for the sole purpose of self-improvement, and he takes credit for it: "I quit drinking heavily because I care about my life."
He doesn't credit the source of the information for his betterment. He knows he could just as easily get health news, movie listings, cooking recipes, travel trips and Soduku from any other newspaper. Should he make wise stock-picks or improve his health, USA Today would not be the first to be thanked for this, because, most certainly, he gathers news from various other sources.
> "If the USA Today reader claimed his life is better because he reads USA Today, I would judge him just as irrational."
I understand and appreciate your point. However, it is common for someone in that situation to describe their rationale as "recent scientific studies" or words to that effect.
One might even observe that the person claiming a scientific rationale for their behavior is typically further removed from the evidence they cite than a person relying on a religious text (which they have often read directly). Many people are predisposed to accept the claim of a scientific basis unquestioningly (a point brought out by the original article) and to dismiss claims based on religious texts as unthinking dogma. Yet we are ready to accept the intellectual validity of "Catcher in the Rye" changed my life.
I don't see any reason to believe that a person claiming to rely on science has more claim to acting for the sake of self improvement than a person relying on religious teachings. Both care deeply about their lives.
Thank you for taking the time to respond intelligently.
I completely understand what you mean and it bugs me to hear, often from myself, that a certain work of fiction "changed my life". Sometimes in exaggeration, to emphasize our appreciation, but often not.
And yes, I get your point about blind trust of "published" materials.
I really hoped to see a better argument than "trust me" ..
People are terrible at identifying what is responsible for improving their lives, and are all too readily willing to credit something else, just as they are to blame; instead of identifying and acknowledging their own efforts, or the lack of them.
I picked religion as an example because it's something people credit for their well-being almost everywhere.
And I am certain "placebo" is a well studied phenomenon, and proven to exist.
When I read self-help advice by Mark Cuban, or Benjamin Franklin, I tend to trust that a lot more than advice from Tony Robbins or Richard Kyosaki.
That is not to say I'd never listen to their message.. but I take everything they say with a big grain of salt.