Here’s a pattern I’ve recognized—all examples are based on real events.
Scenario 1. Starting to exercise
Alice: “I’ve just started working out again. I’ve been doing blah for X minutes and then blah blah for Y minutes.”
Bob: “You shouldn’t exercise like that, you’ll injure yourself. Here’s what you should be doing instead...”
Result: Alice stops exercising.
Scenario 2. Starting to invest
Alice: “Everyone around me tells that investing is a good idea, so I’m now going to invest in index funds.”
Bob: “You better know what you are doing. Don’t invest any money you cannot afford to lose, Past Performance Is No Guarantee of Future Results, also [speculation] so this might not be the best time to invest, also...”
Result: Alice doesn’t invest any of her money anywhere
Scenario 3. Buying lighting
Alice: “My current lighting is quite dim, I’m planning on buying more and better lamps.”
Bob: “Lighting is complicated: you have to look at temperatures and color reproduction index, make sure to have shaders, also ideally you have colder lighting in the morning and warmer in the evening, and...”
Result: Alice doesn’t improve her lighting.
I think this pattern, namely overwhelming a beginner with technical nuanced advice (that possibly was not even asked for), is bad, and Bobs shouldn’t do that.
An obvious improvement is to not be as discouraging as Bob in the examples above, but it’s still tricky to actually make things better instead of demotivating Alice.
When I’m Alice, I often just want to share something I’ve been thinking about recently, and maybe get some encouragement. Hearing Bob tell me how much I don’t know doesn’t make me go learn about the topic (that’s a fabricated option), it makes me discouraged and possibly give up.
My memories of being Bob are not as easily accessible, but I can guess what it’s like. Probably it’s “yay, Alice is thinking about something I know about, I can help her!”, sliding into “it’s fun to talk about subjects I know about” all the way to “you fool, look how much more I know than you”.
What I think Bob should do, and what I’ll do when encountering an Alice, is to be more supportive and perhaps encourage them to talk more about the thing they seem to want to talk about.
I think this is a great point. I appreciate the examples too. I often find it hard to come up with good examples, but at the same time I think good examples are super useful, and these are great examples.
2
For lifting weights, I personally have settled on just doing bench presses and leg presses because that’s what actually triggers enough motivation in me. Other exercises I just don’t enjoy nearly as much. I also find it much more motivating when I can get in and out in a half hour. When I was younger I would often have 90+ minute sessions and I’m just not motivated to do that anymore.
I also only go about once every week (or two). Which I’m ok with. There seem to be pretty big diminishing returns when it comes to strength training and I don’t want to risk aiming for a 3x/week schedule, failing at it, and ending up going months without doing any strength training at all.
3
The failure mode you point out seems to me like a Valley of Bad Rationality. Normal people are not automatically strategic and don’t jump to trying to how you could optimize your exercise routine when you tell them you just started exercising. Rationalists are more strategic and probably make this jump too frequently. Being strategic is often a good thing, but here it’s probably not.
What I think Bob should do, and what I’ll do when encountering an Alice, is to be more supportive and perhaps encourage them to talk more about the thing they seem to want to talk about.
When Bob can’t tell the difference, Alice becomes a natural enemy of Carol, who wants pointers on technical details rather than generic encouragement.
On premature advice
Here’s a pattern I’ve recognized—all examples are based on real events.
Scenario 1. Starting to exercise
Alice: “I’ve just started working out again. I’ve been doing blah for X minutes and then blah blah for Y minutes.”
Bob: “You shouldn’t exercise like that, you’ll injure yourself. Here’s what you should be doing instead...”
Result: Alice stops exercising.
Scenario 2. Starting to invest
Alice: “Everyone around me tells that investing is a good idea, so I’m now going to invest in index funds.”
Bob: “You better know what you are doing. Don’t invest any money you cannot afford to lose, Past Performance Is No Guarantee of Future Results, also [speculation] so this might not be the best time to invest, also...”
Result: Alice doesn’t invest any of her money anywhere
Scenario 3. Buying lighting
Alice: “My current lighting is quite dim, I’m planning on buying more and better lamps.”
Bob: “Lighting is complicated: you have to look at temperatures and color reproduction index, make sure to have shaders, also ideally you have colder lighting in the morning and warmer in the evening, and...”
Result: Alice doesn’t improve her lighting.
I think this pattern, namely overwhelming a beginner with technical nuanced advice (that possibly was not even asked for), is bad, and Bobs shouldn’t do that.
An obvious improvement is to not be as discouraging as Bob in the examples above, but it’s still tricky to actually make things better instead of demotivating Alice.
When I’m Alice, I often just want to share something I’ve been thinking about recently, and maybe get some encouragement. Hearing Bob tell me how much I don’t know doesn’t make me go learn about the topic (that’s a fabricated option), it makes me discouraged and possibly give up.
My memories of being Bob are not as easily accessible, but I can guess what it’s like. Probably it’s “yay, Alice is thinking about something I know about, I can help her!”, sliding into “it’s fun to talk about subjects I know about” all the way to “you fool, look how much more I know than you”.
What I think Bob should do, and what I’ll do when encountering an Alice, is to be more supportive and perhaps encourage them to talk more about the thing they seem to want to talk about.
1
I think this is a great point. I appreciate the examples too. I often find it hard to come up with good examples, but at the same time I think good examples are super useful, and these are great examples.
2
For lifting weights, I personally have settled on just doing bench presses and leg presses because that’s what actually triggers enough motivation in me. Other exercises I just don’t enjoy nearly as much. I also find it much more motivating when I can get in and out in a half hour. When I was younger I would often have 90+ minute sessions and I’m just not motivated to do that anymore.
I also only go about once every week (or two). Which I’m ok with. There seem to be pretty big diminishing returns when it comes to strength training and I don’t want to risk aiming for a 3x/week schedule, failing at it, and ending up going months without doing any strength training at all.
3
The failure mode you point out seems to me like a Valley of Bad Rationality. Normal people are not automatically strategic and don’t jump to trying to how you could optimize your exercise routine when you tell them you just started exercising. Rationalists are more strategic and probably make this jump too frequently. Being strategic is often a good thing, but here it’s probably not.
When Bob can’t tell the difference, Alice becomes a natural enemy of Carol, who wants pointers on technical details rather than generic encouragement.
Lots of related concepts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis