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Jeff Cliff's avatar

1) Future readers: It's worth remembering that http://lesswrong.com/lw/ia/... came before this post, and this post is in the context of it.

2) There *are* some "What To" books with billions of readers, and proponents. However they seem to be centralized into a few well-believed books, such as The Holy Bible, and The Qur'an. Perhaps there's something implicit in this 'What To' book idea that lends itself to old actionable statements being hard to rid one's self of.

3) Going further than Kenny Easwaran goes, I wonder if the possible feedback mechanisms possible in any particular media determine the status games involved in asking for/giving/receiving "what to" data. Books are intrinsically more difficult to give feedback on than blog posts, and both are more intrinsically difficult to give feedback on than some kinds of new media that is specifically dedicated to feedback.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Maybe you're right about advice books, but as someone else pointed out, these sorts of decisions tend to call for much more customized advice. I think people are much more likely to ask friends for advice on whether they should keep seeing someone they're going out with, than to ask friends for advice on where to go to dinner this evening.

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