This started as a comment on Hacker News. I need a browser extension to capture comments on forums and social media as blog drafts.

Here is one of a small number of things I consider indisputable: It’s impossible to make self or mind small enough to be safe from attacks on self or mind. We often fear that, once fully-developed as people, we’ll present a larger attack surface. The truth is having the confidence of a personality built on experience, introspection, and intent makes you better able to shrug off the arrows.

Anyway.

The proper rank for advice:

Best: advice given with awareness of your specific situation from people with relevant experience. Ignore rich people telling you how to live, but do listen to rich people telling you how they live.

Near Top: advice that isn’t intended to be advice like personal stories shared on blogs. Anecdotes and stories can be inspiring and motivating, but aren’t easy to apply unless what you need is inspiration or motivation.

Middle: solicited advice. People most ready to give advice usually either haven’t lived enough or are out of touch in general or with your specific needs. Refer back to the advice on listening to rich people above for an example.

Bottom: unsolicited advice. People who haven’t looked for a job in 30 years love to tell people how to get a job in the 21st century. This is the domain of people who jump at any chance to quote famous people out of context at people who didn’t ask. For example: Warren Buffet has a lot of interesting and sometimes good advice, but second-hand sources pluck out the most quotable bit and present it free of context. I refer back to the advice up there on listening to rich people. Much of Buffet’s advice takes the form of “here’s how I live and what I consider the merits of that lifestyle” rather than dictates from on high. I don’t think he would ever scold people for spending $20 on avocado toast. Much less suggest a rare splurge is why they can’t afford a house.

Some more notions:

Some advice is not for you. Some advice is not for who you are today.

There is no magic year of life that bestows unique value on advice. Toddlers can say some really smart stuff, and 80 year olds sometimes stopped learning in their 20s. Developing a refined and well-practiced discernment is as important as sourcing your opinions from diverse perspectives.

Everyone has bias. Class, wealth (which is different from class), politics, identity, ideology, context, proximity to lunch time, anchoring to things we heard one time and never checking in to see if the facts were exaggerated or failed to replicate. The list goes on. The more you’re aware of your own passive inputs (bias), the sharper your lens on the world.

Having a balanced view on things is better than an extreme view. However, balance as an ideological stance is easily manipulated by extremists. It’s healthy to guard your own personal Overton window by holding on to a few people a little bit further along in either direction so you know when your mind starts changing. Change is good, but make sure it’s you making the changes. For example: I had good friends to point me toward bell hooks and Judith Butler when I started expressing some sour opinions on feminism in the 2010s.

Overall: it’s hard to divorce major influences and turning points in our lives from their context, and that’s why good general advice is so hard to give and equally hard to implement. Take the advice you can and weave it into the growing tapestry of your life. Your path will be fully unique to you.

Stuff I Return To Often

Everyone should do a quick run through Farnam Street’s page on mental models.

https://fs.blog/mental-models/

Take note of the ones that resonate, maybe journal a little, and move on. Do it again every few years. Like watching an old TV show for the nth time, the stuff that resonates changes with time, and that realization can be informative.

Merlin Mann has a wisdom file that’s always under development. His advice here is good:

Related: for any idea that strikes you as irrelevant or dumb or wrong or antithetical to your own experiences and sensibilities, please consider that it may not be, as we say, for you. The reader is encouraged to ignore or reject any ideas that they find undesirable.

The Technium has a list that turned into a book. I haven’t read the book yet and may never get to it.

Standard Ebooks has a small number of books, a little over 100 as I write this, and they’re all worth at least a peek. Sorting by popularity will show a lot of familiar books. Start at the end and work backward instead. I don’t know if the least popular, Mr. Incoul’s Misadventure, is any good, but someone put a lot of work into making it more accessible to modern readers. You might discover why by reading it.

Corollary: investigating the least popular entries in a list sorted by popularity can lead to rare insights. This is especially true of short lists where each entry represents effort.

Beyond that, read widely, take good notes, and try not to let any single input change you unless you choose that change.