I like Viliam’s comment and think that it largely depends on the biography; consider that one internet rule that says that 90% of everything is crap (more specifically, I don’t think that people are by default skilled or diligent in discerning what the “true” factors in developing skill or success are, including experts, and this discernment is in itself a skill that you need to look for). You have to select for biographies that have the characteristics you want, which naturally takes more work to discriminate. More broadly, I don’t think there is any systematic answer to your question of whether, for a given story, the named factors are true. For a lot of life wisdom, unfortunately, at the base level the applicability of various stories has to filter through a vibes/intuition layer because lives are so different and the world changes so fast.
That aside, I think there is another nice benefit to reading a biography rather than just taking away the list of advice, which is that the human brain likes stories and characters, and that makes the given advice much more vivid/salient and therefore likelier to make a difference in your end behavior.
One famous sort of example in the category of biographies are those written by Robert Caro, for which the author has undoubtedly gone to painstaking lengths to investigate causes extremely thoroughly in a mostly epistemically virtuous way, but he himself would admit that his works have presented information in the framework of a narrative which was assembled by him (he would likely also say that this narrative was “true”). (The alternative is the presentation of a bunch of facts in order, which lack salience without some kind of overarching narrative.)
Finally, I wonder if you really feel that e.g the Inner Game of Tennis really doesn’t have any substantive information (ie, is fundamentally just willing the reader into believing in a self-fulfilling prophecy).
(more specifically, I don’t think that people are by default skilled or diligent in discerning what the “true” factors in developing skill or success are, including experts, and this discernment is in itself a skill that you need to look for).
I had a bit of difficulty parsing this parenthetical, so excuse me if I don’t understand but are you saying that understanding what factors or skills are conducive to success is a skill itself that most people lack? And that rather than bothering over which biography to read, I must develop that broader skill?
Finally, I wonder if you really feel that e.g the Inner Game of Tennis really doesn’t have any substantive information (ie, is fundamentally just willing the reader into believing in a self-fulfilling prophecy).
Do I really feel that? Like I said I’m bringing my own baggage but yes, I do. I am very confident that all the books of the titles I mentioned are reader-fluffers: they make the reader feel good about themselves which more often that not will have self-fulfilling prophecies, but it is not primarily due to any specific instructions, tactics, or decision making models and therefore such effects are not unique to these kinds of books.
I would hazard a guess that for every 100 “Think like a X” or “Mindset” shifting books, maybe 1 would have a useful decision making model to impart.[1]
And between 100 books, a lot of them would all have the same nuggets of advice “don’t sweat the small stuff”, “don’t let your opponent determine the rhythm of a negotiation/sports-game/publicity campaign.”, “Even hollow victories induce the Mathew Effect, so give yourself small victories”, “people who ask more questions are perceived as being better conversational partners...successful salesmen ask more questions” etc. etc.
If you were to read 100 of those books, don’t be surprised if by book no. 45 you start noticing the same nuggets. Like I said, any biography, and any self-help book is bound to have some non-zero amount of insight. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good use of a reader’s time relative to their objectives and other sources of the same insight.
Being able to discern what makes someone an expert at X is a skill, Y.
People who are good at X aren’t necessarily good at Y; Y is a separate skill.
(- Skill in Y generalizes across different values of X somewhat)
One needs to look for authors that somehow are good at Y; I didn’t specify how you could do this, and maybe there’s not a very good way in general. (But I do like the Caro biographies. But also, maybe I like them for their entertainment value.)
Re: self-help books, I mostly share your position in thinking that ~80% of such books could be a paragraph to a page, ~18% of them could be blog posts of varying length, and only the remaining ~2% have something substantial to say from a pure informational standpoint. (Worse, in many cases, padding the length of a self help book actively makes it worse/less coherent.) Moreover, I agree that of the good-ish 20%, there is a lot of overlap in the prescriptions given, implied or otherwise. I think that even when a book of this type is done “well”, the purpose of most of the text isn’t for it to be of maximum entropy or something in distinguishing world models, but in giving a bunch of perspectives on a small set of ideas in the hopes that one of them sticks particularly well, or the cumulative exposure makes the idea stick with you better. Spaced repetition or other ritualistic behaviors might achieve the same thing, but require more active agency on your part.
I happen to like the inner game of tennis in particular, and feel that its overlap in useful advice with other books in the genre is relatively low, though I might have a hard time defending my taste explicitly.
On that explanation, yes that makes it much clearer. And it’s interesting to reflect on how identifying expertise in a given domain—be it tennis, or comedy, or soccer—may require a specialized skill. A great soccer player may not be very good at identifying what is unique or specific it is about his rival’s training and thinking and approach even if he heaps praise on them and the “grace” of their playing. Obviously, this is where there is a niche for a coach.
On the relative utility on books and padding: I stress again, that title could be an exception. Not to put you on the spot, but if you did have to summarize the unique and useful advice in the Inner Game of Tennis what would it be?
I remember many years ago reading a chapter of it and finding a very interesting observation about “Who is doing what to whom?”. the reason that interested me is I’m a armchair comedy nerd, and the exact same expression was used in Jerry Lewis’s book on filmmaking which, I’m paraphrasing here, he described as the closest to a theory about comedy he had. (Even now I can think of a plethora of tenuous analogies). I can’t remember the chapter in Inner Game… so I’d be interested to hear what your take out from it was.
And yes, spaced repetition by reading across multiple books does sound like a reasonable phenomenon.
I like Viliam’s comment and think that it largely depends on the biography; consider that one internet rule that says that 90% of everything is crap (more specifically, I don’t think that people are by default skilled or diligent in discerning what the “true” factors in developing skill or success are, including experts, and this discernment is in itself a skill that you need to look for). You have to select for biographies that have the characteristics you want, which naturally takes more work to discriminate. More broadly, I don’t think there is any systematic answer to your question of whether, for a given story, the named factors are true. For a lot of life wisdom, unfortunately, at the base level the applicability of various stories has to filter through a vibes/intuition layer because lives are so different and the world changes so fast.
That aside, I think there is another nice benefit to reading a biography rather than just taking away the list of advice, which is that the human brain likes stories and characters, and that makes the given advice much more vivid/salient and therefore likelier to make a difference in your end behavior.
One famous sort of example in the category of biographies are those written by Robert Caro, for which the author has undoubtedly gone to painstaking lengths to investigate causes extremely thoroughly in a mostly epistemically virtuous way, but he himself would admit that his works have presented information in the framework of a narrative which was assembled by him (he would likely also say that this narrative was “true”). (The alternative is the presentation of a bunch of facts in order, which lack salience without some kind of overarching narrative.)
Finally, I wonder if you really feel that e.g the Inner Game of Tennis really doesn’t have any substantive information (ie, is fundamentally just willing the reader into believing in a self-fulfilling prophecy).
I had a bit of difficulty parsing this parenthetical, so excuse me if I don’t understand but are you saying that understanding what factors or skills are conducive to success is a skill itself that most people lack? And that rather than bothering over which biography to read, I must develop that broader skill?
Do I really feel that? Like I said I’m bringing my own baggage but yes, I do. I am very confident that all the books of the titles I mentioned are reader-fluffers: they make the reader feel good about themselves which more often that not will have self-fulfilling prophecies, but it is not primarily due to any specific instructions, tactics, or decision making models and therefore such effects are not unique to these kinds of books.
I would hazard a guess that for every 100 “Think like a X” or “Mindset” shifting books, maybe 1 would have a useful decision making model to impart.[1]
And between 100 books, a lot of them would all have the same nuggets of advice “don’t sweat the small stuff”, “don’t let your opponent determine the rhythm of a negotiation/sports-game/publicity campaign.”, “Even hollow victories induce the Mathew Effect, so give yourself small victories”, “people who ask more questions are perceived as being better conversational partners...successful salesmen ask more questions” etc. etc.
If you were to read 100 of those books, don’t be surprised if by book no. 45 you start noticing the same nuggets. Like I said, any biography, and any self-help book is bound to have some non-zero amount of insight. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good use of a reader’s time relative to their objectives and other sources of the same insight.
Sorry, yeah, it was badly worded.
Being able to discern what makes someone an expert at X is a skill, Y.
People who are good at X aren’t necessarily good at Y; Y is a separate skill. (- Skill in Y generalizes across different values of X somewhat)
One needs to look for authors that somehow are good at Y; I didn’t specify how you could do this, and maybe there’s not a very good way in general. (But I do like the Caro biographies. But also, maybe I like them for their entertainment value.)
Re: self-help books, I mostly share your position in thinking that ~80% of such books could be a paragraph to a page, ~18% of them could be blog posts of varying length, and only the remaining ~2% have something substantial to say from a pure informational standpoint. (Worse, in many cases, padding the length of a self help book actively makes it worse/less coherent.) Moreover, I agree that of the good-ish 20%, there is a lot of overlap in the prescriptions given, implied or otherwise. I think that even when a book of this type is done “well”, the purpose of most of the text isn’t for it to be of maximum entropy or something in distinguishing world models, but in giving a bunch of perspectives on a small set of ideas in the hopes that one of them sticks particularly well, or the cumulative exposure makes the idea stick with you better. Spaced repetition or other ritualistic behaviors might achieve the same thing, but require more active agency on your part.
I happen to like the inner game of tennis in particular, and feel that its overlap in useful advice with other books in the genre is relatively low, though I might have a hard time defending my taste explicitly.
On that explanation, yes that makes it much clearer. And it’s interesting to reflect on how identifying expertise in a given domain—be it tennis, or comedy, or soccer—may require a specialized skill. A great soccer player may not be very good at identifying what is unique or specific it is about his rival’s training and thinking and approach even if he heaps praise on them and the “grace” of their playing. Obviously, this is where there is a niche for a coach.
On the relative utility on books and padding:
I stress again, that title could be an exception.
Not to put you on the spot, but if you did have to summarize the unique and useful advice in the Inner Game of Tennis what would it be?
I remember many years ago reading a chapter of it and finding a very interesting observation about “Who is doing what to whom?”. the reason that interested me is I’m a armchair comedy nerd, and the exact same expression was used in Jerry Lewis’s book on filmmaking which, I’m paraphrasing here, he described as the closest to a theory about comedy he had. (Even now I can think of a plethora of tenuous analogies).
I can’t remember the chapter in Inner Game… so I’d be interested to hear what your take out from it was.
And yes, spaced repetition by reading across multiple books does sound like a reasonable phenomenon.