Oversimplified, Overgeneralized Rules to Make Me You Rich
- It is good to be a contrarian but do you know what is even better? To be a contrarian contrarian and since according to an unrelated mathematical rule inverse of an inverse is equal to the same thing you should do what everyone is doing, that is buying my book.
- Steve Jobs, Elon musk.
- PASSION, Do what you want, Quit your Job.
- Case studies of why I am right based on misinterpretations of what really happened.
- Correlation == Causation.
- Cliched general advice: Exercise, Brush Your teeth before bed, work hard to succeed, clean your room, etc.
- Filler
- Confirmation Bias, Anecdotal evidence.
- Graphs, Plots(Who needs axes and scales), Math is on my side.
- Random Philosophy detour which has nothing to do with my thesis
- Arguments that look logical on paper but are just superficial overgeneralizations targeted towards inexperienced individuals.
- My life and how I applied these principles to get rich. People disagreed with me. I succeeded and now I am rich.
I wrote this post as a result of my frustration with popular business books and with non-fiction books in general. I am not saying every book is like this, some books are insightful and bring new ideas and perspectives to the table. But I have noticed that some authors have an idea and without fleshing it out and properly researching it they decide to write a book about it. Throw in cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and an incompetent publishers and you have got yourself a popular non-fiction book. There is no peer review and if you sensationalize things you can earn a lot of money.
You cannot even trust books by experts in the field. I bought into the hype of the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker the author seemed legit and well respected within his field. He even appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience. After reading the book I began espousing the benefits of 8 hour sleep until I read this wonderful article by Alexey Guzey. So who should you trust? Should you stop reading non-fiction altogether? I suggest doing the opposite, read as much as you can and be wary of any broad sweeping statements. Even though some books might get something wrong, the good ideas are still valuable. And as with business you can only get better at it (i.e. filtering signal) by exposing yourself to more of it.