Every time I read your stuff, it’s like getting a harsh reality check that stings, but in a good way because it seems to be full of truth.
From a personal perspective—do these cynical views of human nature bother you sometimes? Or do you have more of a “it is what it is,” attitude about it?
I know Everything is BS is the theme here, I’m just curious about some things that make you less cynical about people. Thanks for this piece. Big fan of the blog.
I will say these ideas used to sting more when I was first discovering them, but the sting gradually faded and now I've come to enjoy it--kind of like the pleasant burn of spicy food or an intense workout. Maybe it's an acquired taste. Maybe this blog is only for people with a certain kind of fortitude or masochism. I have become pretty good at separating these ideas from my personal life--a kind of "decoupling" as they say--and that's my usual cope. Also I try to be clear with myself about the kind of cynicism I'm endorsing--it's a humbling cynicism that includes myself and doesn't elevate me above others, and it's a Darwinian cynicism that explains our panhuman motivations but not individual variation or the trustworthiness of individual people. Some people really can be trusted, because it is in their self-interest to be trustworthy, and it is important to recognize that when deciding whom to trust and how to design institutions that incentivize trustworthiness. My other cope is just finding a way to laugh at it all--and it really is quite funny when you think about it.
That all makes sense. I appreciate such a thoughtful response. I particularly like the cope of just finding a way to laugh at all, I’m definitely with you there.
I have wondered this as well. David has described his natural disposition as being agreeable and positive. You’d think this would conflict with the cynical positions he takes in his writing. I would like to hear him elaborate on this.
Suggesting that we consider advice to be bullshit is great advice!
In all seriousness, there is an interesting issue here on the usefulness of positive psychology research that claims that X, Y, and Z tend to increase psychological well-being. The issue is the nomothetic-idiographic divide that Gordon Allport and Robert Holt debated about in 1962. Allport was a champion of the idiographic approach, emphasizing the uniqueness of the individual. He would have approved of your comments about every individual's situation being unique and that general advice might not work for particular individuals. Holt, on the other hand, stressed that science is all about nomothetics or general principles, not individual cases. Psychological research (which would include research in positive psychology) is typically nomothetic, focusing on interrelations among variables. With nomothetic research, it can easily be the case that variables A, B, and C are associated with variables X, Y, and Z, but that does not mean you are going to get a particular level and A, B, and C give a level of X, Y, and Z for every individual. With scatterplots, there will be a lot of points far from the best-fitting regression line.
So, is it worth it consider positive psychology research for trying to have a better life? I would say it is better than behaving randomly and expecting good results. The advice that I gave to my positive psychology students before bombarding them with a textbook worth of findings is to consider the research, try some of the suggestions implied by the research findings, and see what happens. Each student became his or her own case study on what helps and what does not.
I think most psychology is not yet advanced enough to be grounds for offering anyone advice about anything. I mean, most psychologists still haven’t gotten the memo that humans are animals, the mind is an evolved organ, and happiness is a dubious motive for an organism to evolve. Plus we’re still reeling from the replication crisis. We’ve got a long way to go before we can establish the credibility necessary to be giving people advice.
Indeed. Even the best evidenced-basrd therapies like CBT don't work equally well for everyone. Glenn Geher and Nicole Wedberg wrote a textbook Positive Evolutionary Psychology that is probably a cut above others. Sadly, I retired from teaching before getting a chance to use it. Also, Doug Kenrick and his son David wrote a nice book on solving practical everyday problems with evolutionary principles. I bought a copy of that one for each of my four sons.
Yea that’s the standard line but I think it is very wrong and very misguided—quasi-dualistic even. Check out my post Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited for a thorough argument against it.
I agree with all the points in your article. But, you've really just defined happiness in a way that is more nuanced, and pointed out the many ways that we get sidetracked from its pursuit by proxies like money, status, virtue signaling, etc., rather than refuting the idea of happiness as the brain's experience of evolutionary success.
The fitness proxy definition you start with is more like "joy" or "pleasure" than happiness. It makes sense that our moments of joy decline as we age, but it is replaced by a broader sense of contentedness if we have set ourselves up to have meaningful work, family, friends, and/or a solid philosophy and mindfulness practice.
The "goodie" theory of motivation doesn't refute it either, this just fails to distinguish between the neurochemical rewards and our subjective experience thereof. In our conscious mind it feels like we are pursuing pleasure, but our brain is just wiring itself to get more dopamine. Recognizing that there is a subjective experience that correlates to the neural activity is hardly dualism, and only talking about one or the other isn't being nondual.
Meditative happiness is similar to drug-induced happiness. Without a connection to real life the sensation is hollow. The brain knows the difference between achieving a goal and shooting up heroin.
Ultimately, it comes down to the use of "happiness" as a catch-all word for a dozen different mental states, some of which correspond to flourishing or eudaimonia or whatever term you think is better. Which is fine if you are trying to be very precise about things.
When talking to regular people I find they look at me weird when I say eudaimonia instead of happiness. And, the simple explanation that happiness is our subjective reward for doing what the brain wants us to do is one that really resonates and helps people understand the relationship between evolution, neural activity, and subjective experience. I think it's one of the best arguments we can make against dualism.
I'm also a big fan of the positive psychology approach, which is more about knowing yourself and knowing the general principles of human flourishing on a deep level rather than superficial self-help advice.
I'm particularly enamored with the Primal World Beliefs theory being developed by your department. Describing the core beliefs that lead to a positive worldview, the psychological benefits we can derive from it, and providing an individualized assessment of where you are for each one, gives you a personal roadmap for transforming the way you experience life.
You raise a lot of questions here that have been researched, and you would be more credible and interesting if you engaged with that research. As just one example, you imply that therapy is ineffective without referring to the large body of research that finds positive outcomes from therapy. The cost-effectiveness of consultants has also been researched. So maybe some advice is helpful in ways that you are unaware of. https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/policy-and-research/research/psychotherapy-evidence/
Thanks, Ian. I didn’t mean to imply that therapy is ineffective—just that a major function of it could be to rationalize the patient’s behavior. Such rationalizations may be therapeutic (even if they’re bullshit), especially if the patient is having a hard time communicating with others about their issues. The same thing goes for consulting. It may offer economic benefits by legitimizing unpalatable decisions that managers wanted to make anyways but didn’t want to own up to themselves (e.g., cutting costs or laying people off).
This was a great column. Very insightful about America, and corporate America in particular. Having spent half my “career” working in the UK (12 years) and Australia (3 years) and travelling widely in Europe & Asia I feel I’m somewhat qualified to say that corporate culture in the USA is all about status seeking and ass kissing. Flip sides of the same coin. Career advice may be even more harmful than life advice. The author Virginie Desplentes has a great quote “Don’t delude yourself that a life lived with freedom and in search of experience will be free of damage. Punishments will arrive, but conformity is worse. That’s the whole concept of punk—not doing what you’re told.”
One other thought that reinforces your points about advice being BULLSHIT David: Nassim Taleb has suggested that a person should NEVER ask another person for advice on investments. Instead, he/she should ask - “what’s in your portfolio?”
I'm surprised you didn't mention advice as deepity - I would expect this to be a hallmark of many pieces of superficial advice. Unless you think advice falls so much on one side or the other that it usually doesn't qualify as a deepity. As for motivations to take advice seriously, one other reason might be especially prominent memories of selected instances in the past where we did get good advice that made a big difference, which keeps us hoping that if we just get the right advice in this new situation it will make all the difference (kind of like a variable-reinforcement schedule).
From a less cynical perspective, some of what people might call "advice" is simply someone sharing their personal experience as a source of data for the other person, without any normative prescription for what they should do with that anecdote. It's a way of connecting with someone, showing that you care by offering *something* but not too much. (Of course, as soon as this becomes prescriptive the BS quotient probably rises).
Another reason advice is bullshit because most of the time we don’t actually follow the advice and never have any intention of following it, even if it is specific and sensible. How many health advice podcasts do you have to listen to know to exercise, eat modestly, and sleep to then actually do it. But for some reason these podcasts keep proliferating and generating tons of views.
You wrote another brilliant essay titled “incentives are everything”. I would like to apply that framework to the world of self help. We can look at things from the side of both the writer (or whatever medium they use) and the consumer.
The writer is incentivized to sell books and gain positive attention for their writing. This means the people who rise to the top will be charismatic and skilled at saying things that sound good - they will not necessarily have advice that produces quantifiable results. By analogy, politicians are incentivized to win elections, not necessarily to govern effectively, so they tend to be charismatic and skilled at appealing to people’s emotions, but they may or may not do a good job of actually governing.
Consumers sometimes want practical advice just like we sometimes want healthy foods. However, we also want things like:
1. Compelling stories to tell ourselves about our lives and our place within the world.
2. To be told we are virtuous and our enemies are bad
3. Entertainment
4. To feel optimistic about the future
The incentives of self help mostly do not point towards practical, useful life advice which will produce quantifiable results.
"one can consider a generic phrase of “we/you should do X” or even “we/you should do X for Y” where Y is lifted abstraction with multiplicity of deconstructions (e.g., “harmony” or “justice”) – is likely to be an exercise of power"
This is particularly insidious in the realm of mental health, considering how murky it is and interrelated with the environment the person is in. A person with a mental health crisis is like a lost lamb easy pickings for wolves ready to insist troubles and potential redemption come from committing to their God or their ideology of what's virtuous and toxic.
And this vulnerability of the mentally troubled to such dynamics was a major factor of the Zizian fiasco.
Can vouch for the point of asking for advice being about submissiveness. I had this fantasy of asking advice to a very prominent figure in the AI world if I ever where to make it big. I didn't notice until know it was a form of submissiveness. Many things that I would have consider gratefulness where really just covert submission. Not sure what to do with that information but will keep it in mind for sure. Thanks for the awesome post! Never stop doing them, I understand the human condition a bit more each time I read one of this
Love this one, nice work!
Was going to comment the same! Excellent piece.
Every time I read your stuff, it’s like getting a harsh reality check that stings, but in a good way because it seems to be full of truth.
From a personal perspective—do these cynical views of human nature bother you sometimes? Or do you have more of a “it is what it is,” attitude about it?
I know Everything is BS is the theme here, I’m just curious about some things that make you less cynical about people. Thanks for this piece. Big fan of the blog.
Thanks, Jeff. I'm not a disagreeable or cynical person by temperament, as I wrote about in this post: https://www.everythingisbullshit.blog/p/bullshit-is-a-choice
I will say these ideas used to sting more when I was first discovering them, but the sting gradually faded and now I've come to enjoy it--kind of like the pleasant burn of spicy food or an intense workout. Maybe it's an acquired taste. Maybe this blog is only for people with a certain kind of fortitude or masochism. I have become pretty good at separating these ideas from my personal life--a kind of "decoupling" as they say--and that's my usual cope. Also I try to be clear with myself about the kind of cynicism I'm endorsing--it's a humbling cynicism that includes myself and doesn't elevate me above others, and it's a Darwinian cynicism that explains our panhuman motivations but not individual variation or the trustworthiness of individual people. Some people really can be trusted, because it is in their self-interest to be trustworthy, and it is important to recognize that when deciding whom to trust and how to design institutions that incentivize trustworthiness. My other cope is just finding a way to laugh at it all--and it really is quite funny when you think about it.
That all makes sense. I appreciate such a thoughtful response. I particularly like the cope of just finding a way to laugh at all, I’m definitely with you there.
I have wondered this as well. David has described his natural disposition as being agreeable and positive. You’d think this would conflict with the cynical positions he takes in his writing. I would like to hear him elaborate on this.
Suggesting that we consider advice to be bullshit is great advice!
In all seriousness, there is an interesting issue here on the usefulness of positive psychology research that claims that X, Y, and Z tend to increase psychological well-being. The issue is the nomothetic-idiographic divide that Gordon Allport and Robert Holt debated about in 1962. Allport was a champion of the idiographic approach, emphasizing the uniqueness of the individual. He would have approved of your comments about every individual's situation being unique and that general advice might not work for particular individuals. Holt, on the other hand, stressed that science is all about nomothetics or general principles, not individual cases. Psychological research (which would include research in positive psychology) is typically nomothetic, focusing on interrelations among variables. With nomothetic research, it can easily be the case that variables A, B, and C are associated with variables X, Y, and Z, but that does not mean you are going to get a particular level and A, B, and C give a level of X, Y, and Z for every individual. With scatterplots, there will be a lot of points far from the best-fitting regression line.
So, is it worth it consider positive psychology research for trying to have a better life? I would say it is better than behaving randomly and expecting good results. The advice that I gave to my positive psychology students before bombarding them with a textbook worth of findings is to consider the research, try some of the suggestions implied by the research findings, and see what happens. Each student became his or her own case study on what helps and what does not.
I think most psychology is not yet advanced enough to be grounds for offering anyone advice about anything. I mean, most psychologists still haven’t gotten the memo that humans are animals, the mind is an evolved organ, and happiness is a dubious motive for an organism to evolve. Plus we’re still reeling from the replication crisis. We’ve got a long way to go before we can establish the credibility necessary to be giving people advice.
Some advice :
Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re right.
I wrote an entire PhD dissertation around this… the “psy-complex” and it's actual function etc…
Indeed. Even the best evidenced-basrd therapies like CBT don't work equally well for everyone. Glenn Geher and Nicole Wedberg wrote a textbook Positive Evolutionary Psychology that is probably a cut above others. Sadly, I retired from teaching before getting a chance to use it. Also, Doug Kenrick and his son David wrote a nice book on solving practical everyday problems with evolutionary principles. I bought a copy of that one for each of my four sons.
Happiness isn't the motive for evolution it is the subjective experience of our neural networks being trained to do pro-survival stuff.
Yea that’s the standard line but I think it is very wrong and very misguided—quasi-dualistic even. Check out my post Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited for a thorough argument against it.
I agree with all the points in your article. But, you've really just defined happiness in a way that is more nuanced, and pointed out the many ways that we get sidetracked from its pursuit by proxies like money, status, virtue signaling, etc., rather than refuting the idea of happiness as the brain's experience of evolutionary success.
The fitness proxy definition you start with is more like "joy" or "pleasure" than happiness. It makes sense that our moments of joy decline as we age, but it is replaced by a broader sense of contentedness if we have set ourselves up to have meaningful work, family, friends, and/or a solid philosophy and mindfulness practice.
The "goodie" theory of motivation doesn't refute it either, this just fails to distinguish between the neurochemical rewards and our subjective experience thereof. In our conscious mind it feels like we are pursuing pleasure, but our brain is just wiring itself to get more dopamine. Recognizing that there is a subjective experience that correlates to the neural activity is hardly dualism, and only talking about one or the other isn't being nondual.
Meditative happiness is similar to drug-induced happiness. Without a connection to real life the sensation is hollow. The brain knows the difference between achieving a goal and shooting up heroin.
Ultimately, it comes down to the use of "happiness" as a catch-all word for a dozen different mental states, some of which correspond to flourishing or eudaimonia or whatever term you think is better. Which is fine if you are trying to be very precise about things.
When talking to regular people I find they look at me weird when I say eudaimonia instead of happiness. And, the simple explanation that happiness is our subjective reward for doing what the brain wants us to do is one that really resonates and helps people understand the relationship between evolution, neural activity, and subjective experience. I think it's one of the best arguments we can make against dualism.
I'm also a big fan of the positive psychology approach, which is more about knowing yourself and knowing the general principles of human flourishing on a deep level rather than superficial self-help advice.
I'm particularly enamored with the Primal World Beliefs theory being developed by your department. Describing the core beliefs that lead to a positive worldview, the psychological benefits we can derive from it, and providing an individualized assessment of where you are for each one, gives you a personal roadmap for transforming the way you experience life.
You raise a lot of questions here that have been researched, and you would be more credible and interesting if you engaged with that research. As just one example, you imply that therapy is ineffective without referring to the large body of research that finds positive outcomes from therapy. The cost-effectiveness of consultants has also been researched. So maybe some advice is helpful in ways that you are unaware of. https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/policy-and-research/research/psychotherapy-evidence/
Thanks, Ian. I didn’t mean to imply that therapy is ineffective—just that a major function of it could be to rationalize the patient’s behavior. Such rationalizations may be therapeutic (even if they’re bullshit), especially if the patient is having a hard time communicating with others about their issues. The same thing goes for consulting. It may offer economic benefits by legitimizing unpalatable decisions that managers wanted to make anyways but didn’t want to own up to themselves (e.g., cutting costs or laying people off).
This was a great column. Very insightful about America, and corporate America in particular. Having spent half my “career” working in the UK (12 years) and Australia (3 years) and travelling widely in Europe & Asia I feel I’m somewhat qualified to say that corporate culture in the USA is all about status seeking and ass kissing. Flip sides of the same coin. Career advice may be even more harmful than life advice. The author Virginie Desplentes has a great quote “Don’t delude yourself that a life lived with freedom and in search of experience will be free of damage. Punishments will arrive, but conformity is worse. That’s the whole concept of punk—not doing what you’re told.”
One other thought that reinforces your points about advice being BULLSHIT David: Nassim Taleb has suggested that a person should NEVER ask another person for advice on investments. Instead, he/she should ask - “what’s in your portfolio?”
I'm surprised you didn't mention advice as deepity - I would expect this to be a hallmark of many pieces of superficial advice. Unless you think advice falls so much on one side or the other that it usually doesn't qualify as a deepity. As for motivations to take advice seriously, one other reason might be especially prominent memories of selected instances in the past where we did get good advice that made a big difference, which keeps us hoping that if we just get the right advice in this new situation it will make all the difference (kind of like a variable-reinforcement schedule).
From a less cynical perspective, some of what people might call "advice" is simply someone sharing their personal experience as a source of data for the other person, without any normative prescription for what they should do with that anecdote. It's a way of connecting with someone, showing that you care by offering *something* but not too much. (Of course, as soon as this becomes prescriptive the BS quotient probably rises).
Another reason advice is bullshit because most of the time we don’t actually follow the advice and never have any intention of following it, even if it is specific and sensible. How many health advice podcasts do you have to listen to know to exercise, eat modestly, and sleep to then actually do it. But for some reason these podcasts keep proliferating and generating tons of views.
Yes, great point. Could have easily added this one to my list.
From someone who’s been on this earth for 66 years, I find this post to be refreshing and spot on!
Did you live on another planet before moving here 66 years ago?
Maybe so 🤣
I appreciate the thoughtful critique here—but I want to gently offer a different perspective.
Some of us on Substack aren’t here to give advice or position ourselves as experts.
We’re here to create resources—tools, reflections, and invitations—that help people reclaim their own voice, rhythm, and sovereignty.
I don’t assume I know what’s best for anyone else.
What I do offer is what’s worked for me:
not prescriptions, but practices.
Not authority, but lived experience.
Not direction, but reminders of inner power.
In a world saturated with noise, I believe there’s space for voices that aren’t shouting advice but quietly offering clarity.
I think you're hysterical. The last comment on some paragraphs makes me laugh or at least chuckle a good percentage of the time. Thank you!
Thanks David. This is just what I needed to hear. 😄
You wrote another brilliant essay titled “incentives are everything”. I would like to apply that framework to the world of self help. We can look at things from the side of both the writer (or whatever medium they use) and the consumer.
The writer is incentivized to sell books and gain positive attention for their writing. This means the people who rise to the top will be charismatic and skilled at saying things that sound good - they will not necessarily have advice that produces quantifiable results. By analogy, politicians are incentivized to win elections, not necessarily to govern effectively, so they tend to be charismatic and skilled at appealing to people’s emotions, but they may or may not do a good job of actually governing.
Consumers sometimes want practical advice just like we sometimes want healthy foods. However, we also want things like:
1. Compelling stories to tell ourselves about our lives and our place within the world.
2. To be told we are virtuous and our enemies are bad
3. Entertainment
4. To feel optimistic about the future
The incentives of self help mostly do not point towards practical, useful life advice which will produce quantifiable results.
This cracked me up. Just the right amount of sarcasm, without being too angry or bitchy.
Another masterpiece. Waiting for your appearance on OPRAH.
Great piece as usual.
I'm even more cynical on this one :)
"one can consider a generic phrase of “we/you should do X” or even “we/you should do X for Y” where Y is lifted abstraction with multiplicity of deconstructions (e.g., “harmony” or “justice”) – is likely to be an exercise of power"
https://philomaticalgorhythms.substack.com/p/against-rationalism-for-meta-rationality
This is particularly insidious in the realm of mental health, considering how murky it is and interrelated with the environment the person is in. A person with a mental health crisis is like a lost lamb easy pickings for wolves ready to insist troubles and potential redemption come from committing to their God or their ideology of what's virtuous and toxic.
And this vulnerability of the mentally troubled to such dynamics was a major factor of the Zizian fiasco.
Yea the bullshit hole always goes deeper the more you descend it
Can vouch for the point of asking for advice being about submissiveness. I had this fantasy of asking advice to a very prominent figure in the AI world if I ever where to make it big. I didn't notice until know it was a form of submissiveness. Many things that I would have consider gratefulness where really just covert submission. Not sure what to do with that information but will keep it in mind for sure. Thanks for the awesome post! Never stop doing them, I understand the human condition a bit more each time I read one of this