Scott wrote: ↑January 26th, 2023, 6:12 pm
In analogy, imagine you were hiring for a very important job opening. There was only one opening, but there was thousands of people who had applied. Even the smallest blemish on a résumé would be enough to put it in the 'no' column. Would someone who got fired from the last job for stealing always be a bad hire? No, but when there is plenty of other candidates who are equally qualified by all other measures and the only difference is that one fact, then it becomes a valid filter.
Lydia Matson wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 10:49 amwhen taking advice there isn't really a limit to how much we can take.
That point of disagreement is indeed a crucial premise in my logic. Thank you for wisely identifying it.
Everything else you've said makes total sense if you believe the above quoted sentence to be true. But I believe that sentence to be false, and then I think everything I've concluded does follow from that.
If I could magically pause time and read every book in the world before continuing my one little human life, I would, including weight loss advice books by morbidly obese people. But even if I lived to 100 and spent every day reading all day, I still would
not be able to read even 0.00001% of books out there. In other words, even if I spent all day every reading, I would still have to say 'no' to 99.999% of books out there.
If I could magically pause time and watch every Ted Talk and lecture that has ever been given, I would.
If I could magically pause time and have a thoughtful face-to-face conversation with every single human being on this planet, I would.
Even if I had trillions and trillions of hours, I still would only be able chip away at a tiny fraction of that stuff. And a human life doesn't even come close to that. A human life is so very short.
Even if we explicitly consider only non-fiction books that are specifically and explicitly described as books of advice (e.g. self-help books), I still could not read 99.99% of them.
To compare how competitive it is to get to give me (or you) advice to a single job opening with a thousand candidates is actually an understatement. I cannot even read 1 in 1,000 such books. The ratio gets even worse when we consider non-book forms of advice such as certain lectures or hiring a therapist or life coach or such.
There are about 8 billion people on this world. That is 8,000 million.
Worse yet, keep in mind, of course, that taking the advice requires not only spending the time listening to it in the first place, but then taking the time to actually follow that advice (i.e. put into action).
For example, in the case of choosing whether or not to take the weight loss advice of given by a morbidly obese person, I can only go on one diet and exercise plan at a time, and only a handful in a lifetime (depending on how many I quit, which itself might indicator of how good I am at picking whose advice to take).
I cannot afford to choose to take advice from someone who I would rate as 98% reliable if there someone else who is 99% reliable. I cannot afford to overlook red flags or blemishes on a proverbial résumé because it is so very competitive.
If I think a book is only going to be a 1 out of 1,000 read in terms of quality, meaning I think it is only better than 99.9% of other books, then that is not good enough.