The economics angle is the one you want to expand on.
You see, Jim is an economist.
When he gets a piece of advice, he thinks about game theory. He recognizes there is information asymmetry between the advisor and the advisee. He thinks about whether your incentives are aligned. He thinks about whether there's any cost in producing the advice, vs following it. He thinks about further-round effects of you potentially becoming dependent on the advisor for future decisions, and the principal-agent perspectives in that relationship.
At least in my life, the two most frequent issues about advice being worthless were it either required too much willpower, so any progress was lost as soon as focus shifted, or the "solution" offered by the advice was the same as telling someone "so don't have the problem." Actually, I'd classify the willpower issue as a subset of the "so don't have the problem" problem.
I’ve run into a third problem more commonly - miscalibration.
It’s very hard to figure out how much to apply most advice. Advice always lacks an understanding of the context it will be applied in. Far too over, it gets applied in too absolute of terms.
>In ancient India, there was a long-running feud between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Duryodhana, leader of the Kauravas, planned a huge war to end things forever. Krishna warned that this would lead to the total destruction of both sides and made every effort to forge a peace. Duryodhana refused to listen and launched his war. There were 4 million warriors at the start. After 18 days, all but 11 were dead.
Isn't this mythology? Trying to get a rational explanation for actors' actions feels moot, since they are programmed that way by the author of the story.
My guess is that it is still somewhat relevant since many religions draw their teachings from real-life stories passed down over generations. Maybe the names are wrong, and the numbers inflated, but I've seen this exact same scenario plenty of times in my life. That's why we have expressions like "burn bridges," "sever ties," or "quemar naves" in Spanish, all more or less indicating a point of no return where the outcome could be equally negative for all involved parties.
Yes. It's mythology. But that story is often told to illustrate that Krishna knew that his advice, however good, would not be accepted. Nevertheless, he gave his best advice. It is meant to provide instruction to people who are put in the position of giving advice. A consultant's 'dharma' if you will.
The problem is compounded by uncertainty, basically fear, and hopelessness or laziness.
If, you knew for certain, that Problem X is solvable with Effort Y with enough of Resource Z - would you act upon the advice?
If anyone has given advice that was not heeded it can be frustrating. All the advice and information exists to solve your problem yet if it remains - why?
Losing weight is an example of a known problem with a solution. People do the equation - the Effort Y is often variable that is lacking because the Effort is 18 hours of consistent, positive behavior, for weeks or months in a row.
The deeper problem, say from childhood food insecurity or poor self image, or whatever the root or real problem, is a detail. For me the root of the problem is "I love pizza" so the solution is not to change my relationship with pizza but to stop eating more than I burn. The outward physical change of behavior, however approached, is the solution.
And you are wrong about the detail thing. Maybe you should stop looking for simplistic explanations that stroke your ego? But that advice is tough to follow, isn't it?
How do you know the condition of my ego? This is an internal thought which you cannot possibly know.
Let's go down the rabbit hole of causes and reasons - now what? What is the solution to the pizza problem if it is a long past childhood memory I want to re-create? What now? I suppose I could think differently about the past? Suppress that emotional drive? Finally accept that the past is a memory and not some repeatable event forever locked behind the mind of a once happy pizza eater?
In programming terms an analogy would be to misdiagnose the root cause of a bug and paper over it with a hack.
The solution to just use willpower is fragile, given that willpower is a finite resource. But I suppose it is expedient, much like a hack of the software variety.
As a parent, I’ve recognized advice I’ve given as advice I received when younger. I always tried to take good advice, but so often the words can only truly be understood, to their depth, by having compatible experience. The same words have tremendously different meaning to someone that has been there vs someone who’s never experienced the topic. After pondering about this, I don’t think there is a ‘fix’. We do our best to help, but have to patiently wait for the other person to gain their own experience. THEN nuances can be given as advice.
We usually learn when there are repercussions. Otherwise you can keep thinking maybe you’re the exception. Advice doesn’t have any kind of feedback mechanism to your life. But when you get fired or broken up with or diabetes - well now your life is completely upended and only a total fool would not learn something at that point
2 kinds of people in the world, those who will work and those who don't. Those who work have long gotten over the inability to accept advice and criticism. Those who don't are unable to accept advice. Advice is hostile to them. There are cultures where high % of the people are like this.
Once you accept this, you must figure out which a person is and adjust how to give advice. You can straight up ask, but that makes for boringness. Then you approach it with positivity and excitement; speaking in regards to that person's wants.
You'll be shocked what kind of happens around you in the periphery afterwards. A positive and negative reaction occurs, you might call it karma or what comes around goes around. Playing with advice can be dangerous, which is why it's a hostile thing for some cultures.
Advice addresses one or two parts of a system in flux. Motivation, habits, beliefs, understanding, experience, skills, etc. then a variety of issues appear to happen to the system. In reality, a lot of what "happens" is predictable based on the system, poor sleep leading to mistakes, etc, but it appears to the person inside the system to be a complex machine on a moving playing field. People also greatly misunderstand what is required to effect change, as simply as poorly realising Murphy's fifth law, "Before you can do something, you must do something else."
Advice and verbal axioms like "eat more vegetables" probably don't work because they don't operate at the level of emotions and imagery, they're just words. People are not as rational as they like to think they are.
I believe a good bit of it relates to "switching costs." Consumer brands that offer a new product to compete with an existing one often do it at a discounted price. The companies essentially must pay a fee to the consumer for the time, effort, and uncertainty related to trying something different.
An example is wanting someone to read a book you think they'll like. It costs you nothing to give this advice. If anything, you stand to gain in something like reputation or ego if it's helpful or something they enjoy. But it potentially costs time they they might've spent enjoying something else even more.
If I'm giving people advice (in a non-casual setting) then I always try to preface it with the fact that advice is usually, if not always, anecdotal and ego-driven
Because pain is the best teacher.
I have found though that I’m able to learn other people’s lessons. With empathy I’m able to feel someone else’s pain and learn from it.
I think people want to be in charge of their own life, and taking advice is a step away from that. They have to give up on "muddling through" by themselves or surrender their agency to follow advice.
yeah, and a lot of advice is "forgot shampoo? divorce!"
You see, Jim is an economist.
When he gets a piece of advice, he thinks about game theory. He recognizes there is information asymmetry between the advisor and the advisee. He thinks about whether your incentives are aligned. He thinks about whether there's any cost in producing the advice, vs following it. He thinks about further-round effects of you potentially becoming dependent on the advisor for future decisions, and the principal-agent perspectives in that relationship.
Jim is a dismal character.