No, I pay a lot of attention to content which influences the behavior of 100 million people, especially in a destructive way, especially when that influencing attempt is in itself dishonest. And stop with the ad-hominems. It's not about inferring my or anybody's emotions.
It's about 100m people extolling that sort of book as some bible that it isn't.
There's something zeitgeisty to the book and the reception it got, which is why I keep referencing the Po Bronson speech. Diamond's book an apologia for an entire generation being unreasonable and manipulative, which is noteworthy, just as previous books that captured a zeitgeist.
What ad hominem? I'm not refuting anything you said. I just have no idea what is the point you're getting at. Do you want to crusade against bad books? I'm getting a lot of sentiment and no real argument or actionable advice in your comments.
'not actionable' and 'no real argument' seem weird things to say to a critique of a bad book, bad author, genre, bad reviews and bad bestseller list (NYT); each person can make their mind up without needing me or anyone to tell them what to do.
If I was in the business of telling people what to do I'd say "Avoid these things, also learn telltale signs of superficial reviews and groupthink".
On a deeper level I suggested it's worth considering what led to Diamond ever being lauded as a phony expert on negotiation (or, if you think it's self-evident that the NYT is not worth paying attention to and blurbs and Amazon reviews are shilled, then I'd appreciate where you find better book recommendations, other than word-of-mouth.)
> Do you want to crusade against bad books?
I don't see that calling a bad book and author bad constitutes crusading; that seems like twisting a straightforward discussion. Instead of trying to impute motives, I think you're just saying "it seems to me futile to object to superficiality, just ignore it", is that right? (Conversely, do you want to crusade against HN posts which you deem to be non-actionable? Presumably you don't either.)
I did also nod towards a wider ongoing discussion about superficiality vs authenticity as pops up in Po Bronson, Chuck Palahniuk, HN [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=superficial], Susan Cain, Haemin Sunim, Viktor Frankl... that took me a couple of sentences, still not a crusade.
