A recurring theme is that ‘commonsense’ advice is often wrong. This is why so much advice is wrong or bad, because it’s rooted in commonsense or ‘first principle’ notions of virtue, but unsupported by empirical evidence or experience after said advice is applied and predictably fails.
We live in a society, for example, where low-grade sociopathy pays. You don’t want to take it too far or you go to jail, but just enough to have an advantage over others who are constrained in this manner. Commonsense or popular advice to ‘be a good listener’, selfless, and courteous works better in theory or in print form (e.g. a self-help book), than when put to practice. People like the idea that it works, hence why it’s popular (the so-called ‘social desirability bias’). Certain advice is popular because either people wish it were true, or it seems plausible or conceivable that it works. “It just has to work!”
If these business books that give the same regurgitated advice are so effective, why would the authors write a book instead of applying the advice? From the post, “The Age of Rage“:
Imagine you want to create a generation of suckers; what better way than to write a popular business book full of bad advice marketed to those very people you will be exploiting.
Being a good listener and courteous just sounds right, so it must be good advice? And then in ‘real life’ we see the opposite, in which gestures of kindness are rebuked or unrequited, and the worst people get ahead. We blame ourselves for applying the advice wrong, instead of awakening to the fact that we’ve been sold a bill of goods.
A notable recent example is Nikola Corporation CEO Trevor Milton (not to be confused for The Daily Show Trevor) , who faked the test drive of the company’s flagship hydrogen truck, which through a series of events led to a fraud conviction, shares of Nikola stock becoming nearly worthless, and jail time–only to be pardoned. Maybe the best advice is to make the right donations and know the right people to secure a lifeline.
The social desirability bias also has implications for policy, for example, education spending. It’s commonly believed that spending more money on better schools and teachers always produces better outcomes, with no point of diminishing returns. In reality, the data shows little correlation in school funding and test scores after basic needs are met. The commonsense notion of academic achievement being linearly positively correlated with spending is unsupported by the data. The ignored confounder is innate ability. Wealthier neighborhoods tend to have smarter students, hence higher scores, not that more spending begets achievement.
So to bring this back, the best advice is to try to copy what already successful people are doing at your chosen domain, while trying to minimize as many confounders as possible. Disregard the worthless commonsense advice, and instead do what other successful people right now are already doing.