I think you’re mixing a few questions that seem distinct to me:
1. Are there good reasons to be suspicious of advice that advice giver doesn’t follow themselves?
2. Is there a good reason to support social norms against hypocrisy?
3. Are there good reasons to avoid giving advice that I don’t follow myself?
@1. I think hypocrisy is always a evidence for the advice being poor. It’s not a very strong evidence. If I can easily check sources, reasoning and evaluate results of taking the advice it’s probably not worth worrying much about it.
But sometimes it’s only evidence you get that social norms allow you to use.
@2. I think so. You might need those norms yourself to get out of situation when social norms don’t let you use some other evidence you have.
You might want to keep them in place so that other people who are in situations where they can’t use some evidence they have because of social norms to get out.
@3. I think it’s ok to offer advice that you don’t follow yourself but I try to include a warning for recipient to be more cautious if they try to follow it[0].
The main intention behind my post was to argue that people over-react on #1, which is bad epistemics, and also overreact with respect to #3. I think we roughly agree on #1 and #3. I’m much more uncertain about #2. I’ve been making the claim that the norm is the cause of the problems with #1 and #3, and should therefore be removed. But, the claim was sort of incidental to my original point, and I didn’t think through it so much.
There are also some other distinctions which might be drawn out. I’ll think about editing the post to clarify all the possible claims.
I think you’re mixing a few questions that seem distinct to me:
1. Are there good reasons to be suspicious of advice that advice giver doesn’t follow themselves?
2. Is there a good reason to support social norms against hypocrisy?
3. Are there good reasons to avoid giving advice that I don’t follow myself?
@1. I think hypocrisy is always a evidence for the advice being poor. It’s not a very strong evidence. If I can easily check sources, reasoning and evaluate results of taking the advice it’s probably not worth worrying much about it.
But sometimes it’s only evidence you get that social norms allow you to use.
@2. I think so. You might need those norms yourself to get out of situation when social norms don’t let you use some other evidence you have.
You might want to keep them in place so that other people who are in situations where they can’t use some evidence they have because of social norms to get out.
@3. I think it’s ok to offer advice that you don’t follow yourself but I try to include a warning for recipient to be more cautious if they try to follow it[0].
[0] Assume I want the recipient to do well.
The main intention behind my post was to argue that people over-react on #1, which is bad epistemics, and also overreact with respect to #3. I think we roughly agree on #1 and #3. I’m much more uncertain about #2. I’ve been making the claim that the norm is the cause of the problems with #1 and #3, and should therefore be removed. But, the claim was sort of incidental to my original point, and I didn’t think through it so much.
There are also some other distinctions which might be drawn out. I’ll think about editing the post to clarify all the possible claims.