A lot of the advice I’ve received, especially as a child, teen, and undergrad, was bad. A common theme in bad advice I’ve received is that it was premised on the idea that the recipient (maybe me personally, maybe a group I’m part of that it’s targeted at) is making a bad tradeoff and should make a different choice on that tradeoff.
Typical such advice might be something like:
Think for yourself; don’t give in to peer pressure.
Stop arguing about every little thing (and by implication, the thing you’re currently trying to argue about is small and unimportant).
Body image issues are very damaging, so don’t worry about your weight.
Always try your hardest.
On the margin, following one of these pieces of advice might cause someone to make better decisions, or it might push them further in a direction they’ve already gone too far in, e.g. telling younger me to be less susceptible to peer pressure. The target audience might be receptive to the advice, or they might interpret it as a personal attack from a perspective that’s biased against them, e.g. telling younger me not to get in so many arguments.
The problem is that all these pieces of advice simply assert that the recipient is making a mistake but don’t provide the tools to help them identify when they are or aren’t making that particular mistake. Whether they take the advice becomes a matter of how much they trust the source and how predisposed they already are to follow it. I would expect trust for the source to be generally uncorrelated with whether the advice is good, and I would expect being predisposed to follow certain advice to be negatively correlated with being the sort of person who would benefit from following it.
Teaching someone how to identify signs of groupthink and which situations depend on social harmony vs on getting the right answer (and which specific choices people tend to regret) is much more useful than some generic dictum about the dangers of peer pressure.
As an adult, I’ve learned to ask the sorts of questions that help me turn advice I receive into better heuristics, but it’s still usually presented as “adjust your bias” rather than “here’s a better heuristic”.
People need better heuristics, not different biases.
Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/
A lot of the advice I’ve received, especially as a child, teen, and undergrad, was bad. A common theme in bad advice I’ve received is that it was premised on the idea that the recipient (maybe me personally, maybe a group I’m part of that it’s targeted at) is making a bad tradeoff and should make a different choice on that tradeoff.
Typical such advice might be something like:
Think for yourself; don’t give in to peer pressure.
Stop arguing about every little thing (and by implication, the thing you’re currently trying to argue about is small and unimportant).
Body image issues are very damaging, so don’t worry about your weight.
Always try your hardest.
On the margin, following one of these pieces of advice might cause someone to make better decisions, or it might push them further in a direction they’ve already gone too far in, e.g. telling younger me to be less susceptible to peer pressure. The target audience might be receptive to the advice, or they might interpret it as a personal attack from a perspective that’s biased against them, e.g. telling younger me not to get in so many arguments.
The problem is that all these pieces of advice simply assert that the recipient is making a mistake but don’t provide the tools to help them identify when they are or aren’t making that particular mistake. Whether they take the advice becomes a matter of how much they trust the source and how predisposed they already are to follow it. I would expect trust for the source to be generally uncorrelated with whether the advice is good, and I would expect being predisposed to follow certain advice to be negatively correlated with being the sort of person who would benefit from following it.
Teaching someone how to identify signs of groupthink and which situations depend on social harmony vs on getting the right answer (and which specific choices people tend to regret) is much more useful than some generic dictum about the dangers of peer pressure.
As an adult, I’ve learned to ask the sorts of questions that help me turn advice I receive into better heuristics, but it’s still usually presented as “adjust your bias” rather than “here’s a better heuristic”.
I’d like to read an article about this.