Browsing the archives for the reliability tag.
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Trusting Books

Writing

I’m reading three books in alternation at the moment, and I’m not sure I trust any of them.

Trusting a writer’s competence
The first is a non-fiction book about how people change, and while it’s interesting and entertaining so far, one of their opening topics is some of the research that has been done into the alleged depletion of willpower–experiments where half the subjects are given a task that requires willpower and half aren’t, and then all subjects are given a task that (unknown to them) is impossible. The finding is that the people who have not had to exercise willpower in the first part of the experiment tend to stick with the impossible task longer. The researchers concluded from this that willpower must be a resource that can be used up.

Without going into the subject in great detail here, the conclusion is just a theory of how willpower works, and it isn’t one for which anyone as far as I know of has offered a realistic mechanism. The experimental results (the group that hasn’t had to exert willpower doing better on the task) are interesting, but the interpretation is just an educated guess, and a problematic one–see “Does Willpower Really Get Used Up?.” Yet the authors of the book I’m reading talk about the theory as though it’s established fact and move on from there. Do they really not understand the difference between scientific evidence and a theory used to explain the evidence? This is key for someone who’s going to be interpreting the results of scientific studies.

So for that first book, I’m not sure I trust the authors’ competence, which is a problem.

Trusting a writer’s intentions
The second book is a novel, John Kennedy O’Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. I have a vague idea that I’ve read it before, but all I remembered was how revolting the main character was. Re-reading it, I find that all of the characters are revolting: they’re stupid or weak or pitiable or mindlessly self-centered. I don’t believe that’s what people are actually like, as a rule, and so when an author fills a novel with such characters at the start, then I have to wonder what the author’s view of the world is and where the story is going. In this book, I don’t trust the author’s intentions for the book.

Trusting a writer’s personality
The third book is actually a series of lectures on CD, but since it’s very much like an audiobook, I’m treating it as one. The subject is Russian history, and the lecturer has a great many strong credentials. What I’ve heard so far of the series is interesting, clear, and–as far as I can tell–very well-informed. I feel pretty confident that the guy knows what he’s talking about.  So what’s my problem? I don’t have much of one, except that the author’s photo is on the front of the CD case, and in that photo his smile is one-sided, a type of expression that often means pretend friendliness that actually masks contempt or displeasure. The expression reminds me of an acquaintance whose actions and choices are routinely awful and unkind. So in this case, I don’t trust the author personally–admittedly, based on very scant information. It’s very iffy to try to interpret body language based on a single expression or gesture (see “How to Tell If Someone’s Interested in You, and Other Powers of Body Language“)–but I’m on my guard.

Trust in person
When someone asks “Do you trust me?”, they’re really asking at least three different things:

1) Do you trust my intentions?
2) Do you trust my decisions?
3) Do you trust my skills?

For instance, someone might offer to take care of my kids for me, and if I didn’t trust them on any of those three fronts, then I’d have to say no. If I didn’t trust that they intended to keep my kids safe, happy, and healthy, then that would be a no go. If they did mean well but tended to make bad choices–for instance, if the person were an active alcoholic or very absent-minded–then there would still be a problem, because I wouldn’t trust their ability to make good decisions. And people who mean well and are on the ball but don’t know what they hell they’re doing aren’t good candidates for an important job, either.

This applies to books because writing a book is an important job. If the book is successful at all, it will have anything from hundreds to millions of readers, and each reader is going to devote hours of focused attention to the book, which gives the writer responsibility for thousands to many millions of hours of readers’ time. Personally, if I’m going to invest, say, 6 or 7 hours in reading a book (which is roughly how long it takes an average adult reader to read an average novel), I want to be sure I’m investing that time well.

How it all shakes out
So for the non-fiction book, I’ll read a little further and see whether the authors seem to be taking care with their facts. If not, I’ll stop reading, because bad information is worse than no information at all.

For the novel, I may or may not read a little further to see if there’s any hint of a worldview that I care about. If the author continues to go on depicting a world in which everyone is pathetic and awful, I’ll drop it, because I don’t think that’s a realistic or useful way to look at the world. I wonder if that isn’t what I did the first time I tried reading it.

But where the Russian history lectures are concerned, I think I’ll probably keep listening. Even if the author happens to be an unkind or untrustworthy individual personally (and of course I have no clear reason to believe that he is, just a hint that he might be), I do trust him to do a good job of teaching about Russia through audio lectures, because that’s not an activity that requires any personal interaction. This is one place where writing departs from taking care of children, that in some cases bad people can write good books.

What about you? Do you trust the books you’re reading? Or writing?

Photo by K’s GLIMPSES

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When Self-Help Goes Wrong: Red Flags and Bad Advice

Resources

Some self-help materials are worth their weight in gold at the very least, not just for ourselves, but because improving our own lives tends to help people around us (see “How self-help helps everyone else” and “How Other People’s Happiness Affects Our Own“). Self-help is important because most of our behaviors are learned: no one comes into the world understanding how to make the best of what they have, be happy in difficult circumstances, untangle conflicts, follow a healthy path, and otherwise create an ideal life–and I’m skeptical that it’s possible to learn all of these things without at least a little help from resources or mentors.

But while it’s tremendously fortunate that there’s so much help available out there, some of that help is flawed, some is useless, and some is actually harmful (see “Telling Bad Advice from Good Advice“). Here are some things to watch out for in self-help and personal growth books, shows, CD’s, DVD’s, talks, and seminars:

  • Common knowledge. When someone says “everyone knows that this is true, and therefore …”, there’s always the danger that the thing that everyone “knows” isn’t actually accurate at all. An example: the “common knowledge” that it takes 21 days (or 28 days, etc.) to form a habit is utterly wrong (see “How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit?“).
  • Reasoning by analogy. When someone tries to prove something by describing something else, they’re actually not proving anything at all. If I were to start talking about the stomach as a fuel tank and make suggestions about how to eat based on car engines, the information I’d be giving wouldn’t be based on a real understanding of how our bodies work, but on something else that isn’t even directly related. Analogies are often helpful for making a point clearer, but by themselves they don’t prove anything.
  • Reasoning by wordplay. Using puns and similar-sounding words can be a good way to help people remember points, but like analogies, wordplay doesn’t prove anything. Watch out for people who try to make their point through clever word usage instead of through facts.
  • Where a word comes from is not what it means. It surprises me how many self-help gurus and motivational speakers don’t know the difference between where a word comes from and what it actually means. Meanings of words have to do with how we understand those words today, not with the words and phrases they came from centuries back. The word “company,” for instance, originally meant “a group of friends,” yet that doesn’t mean that anyone employed at a business establishment today is working among buddies. Word derivations like this are also often used to “prove” points in some kinds of self-help material, but they’re just another form of non-factual wordplay.
  • Iffy science. It’s easy to make claims or declarations about one study that may later turn out to be flawed, or to misunderstand what is or isn’t really being demonstrated in a scientific study. Unfortunately, it’s often hard to know whether or not someone is misusing scientific research without referring to the original source. The more-reliable sources tend to describe exactly what happened in the studies they’re talking about, while the less-reliable ones more often just say that science has proved one thing or another. And technically, science doesn’t prove anything: it’s just a way of gathering more information. Any conclusions anyone makes from a scientific study are only theories to explain what happened in the study, not unquestionable truths.
  • Mountains out of molehills. Even good scientific conclusions can sometimes be misused if they’re magnified inappropriately. For instance, there are many foods and practices that can contribute in a small way to weight loss, but some of these are seized on and described as miracle foods or fat-melting secrets when the real impact they’ll have isn’t even likely to be noticeable.
  • Unhealed physicians. If I take advice from someone, ideally I’d like to be taking it from someone who has demonstrated that the advice works. True, it’s possible to pass along useful information without always being able to take full advantage of that information (see “Knowing Isn’t Enough: The 4 Steps Between Knowledge and Action”), but be wary of people who say they are authorities on something without having done it themselves, like people who say they know how to make money but have only ever done so by telling other people how to make money. One example comes to mind of a doctor who gives weight loss, health, and habit change advice while having been noticeably overweight for most of his life.

Despite all of the not-so-helpful self-help “experts” who give advice that may not be helpful to anyone, there are also any number of people out there in the world with real experience and understanding of living a well-directed, meaningful life. The more we seek out and listen to those people and not their flashier, less-informed colleagues, the better off we’ll be.

Photo by virtualreality

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