Short answer is that I think insight porn can put people on hedonic treadmills that optimize for things which don’t easily cash out in the real world and neglect to consider basic, object-level advice even if they’re not currently doing it.
Oftentimes, what you really need is some way of getting yourself to just do the obvious things, by means of metacontrarian arguments or otherwise.
The problem with basic, object-level advice is that has to be specific to a particular person and a particular situation. There are not that many generic universal solutions applicable to all and sundry—in most cases, “it depends”.
It is useful to give people tools, but it also is useful to give people insights which will allow them to make and modify tools of their own.
However, I do think that most insight based posts are also fairly specific (i.e. not super generalizable).
Also, maybe I’m on the denser end here, but it took me a long time to make the connection between taking insights and finding ways to adapt them to things that would help me. I’m thinking that articles which explicitly harp on this might be useful.
Everyone likes insight porn :-)
But I don’t know why you think that insights are less useful than more instrumental advice.
Short answer is that I think insight porn can put people on hedonic treadmills that optimize for things which don’t easily cash out in the real world and neglect to consider basic, object-level advice even if they’re not currently doing it.
Oftentimes, what you really need is some way of getting yourself to just do the obvious things, by means of metacontrarian arguments or otherwise.
The problem with basic, object-level advice is that has to be specific to a particular person and a particular situation. There are not that many generic universal solutions applicable to all and sundry—in most cases, “it depends”.
It is useful to give people tools, but it also is useful to give people insights which will allow them to make and modify tools of their own.
Sure, I think that’s totally fair.
However, I do think that most insight based posts are also fairly specific (i.e. not super generalizable).
Also, maybe I’m on the denser end here, but it took me a long time to make the connection between taking insights and finding ways to adapt them to things that would help me. I’m thinking that articles which explicitly harp on this might be useful.