How to Take Advice

In general the rule of thumb in taking advice is do as I do, not do as I say.

Internet is filled with successful people giving advices. Elon Musk, Peter Theil, etc. Apply their advice in your life and you will live a miserable poor life.

Let me break this down.

Most of successful people think that world is what they have experienced. In reality, they are all outliers. World they experience is vastly different than any one of us experience. They are successful, so they can get away with pretty much whatever bullshit they desire to say like work non-stop, or don’t go to college. And their blind followers will somehow convince themselves of whatever this successful-but-ignorant dude is saying is the right thing to do.

When they give you advice, they are thinking that whatever worked for them will work for you too, without realizing how big of an outlier they are. Only data point they have considered is themselves. If not, they have also considered some of their other successful friends who are just as ignorant of the world as they are. Their heads are so far up their asses they have no grasp of reality or common sense. They can’t fathom that there is any other way of thinking than their own.

Think about this advice don't go to college. First of all, people who scored straight As in their college are telling others to not go to college. Ask one of them to fund a company started by someone without a college degree and see what happens? See how many fancy college grads they themselves have hired. Bryan Caplan is an economist who devoted his life to study education system in US. He has written a book called The case against Education. He argues about how useless higher education is, but even he agrees that on an individual level there are great benefits of going to college. For example, having a Masters degree will get you 10% more annual salary than an someone doing the same job without a Masters degree.

Moreover, most of these people have to secure their company’s own interest. Everything that they say is sugar-coated to protect their organization’s interests. For example, Elon Musk keeps talking about how AI is going to take over the world. Ask anyone who has learn AI (think a Masters degree in AI) and he will tell you how big of a lie it is. Some of them go even as far as saying that it will create jobs.

One of the business-person, I really respect is Shridhar Vembu. He is as honest as a business-person can get. He describes a PhD degree as mental masterbation and he regrets having one. I like to think the mental masterbation part to be true, but my guess is that without that PhD it would have been quite difficult for him to even enter the borders of USA and he would have lost a lot of business because of that.

From a biological standpoint, greatest flattery is still imitation and people reward imitation. That’s why college professors care so deeply about grades. That’s why people hire from their own almamater, etc. My intution is that to be successful, you have to conform to current stardards, regardless of how useless they are.

In general, it is a good idea to take advice from economists than anyone who is successful.