Based Camp: Why Do So Many Self-Help Gurus Have Terrible Lives?

In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone analyze what makes some self-help and life advice useful versus dangerous or ineffective. They break down the incentives and blindspots of different types of gurus, warning against advice tied too closely to an ideology or a guru's identity. The couple emphasizes focusing on your own values and life goals first. They argue happiness is a byproduct of pursuing meaning, not an end in itself. Overall they advocate philosophical inquiry to determine your purpose, combined with pragmatic steps towards efficacy.

Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm Collins. Hello,

Malcolm: Simone Collins. Are we going to try to use our names even though we're married?

Simone: Yes. Mr. Malcolm Collins.

Malcolm: I don't know. Branding. I don't like it. Maybe we'll just do Malcolm and Simone going forward. But there are a lot of people out there on the internet who are like life advice gurus, and we definitely do not style ourselves as life advice gurus. That said a lot of these people seem to be giving very bad advice. And as people who aren't life advice gurus, but who seem to have their lives together more than, a lot of society these days, this is what always gets me about the life guru space.

Malcolm: And I also see this within the dating guru space, is that many of these people don't have successful relationships. Or they don't seem to really have their lives together. And I actually was [00:01:00] talking to, I remember a long time ago somebody in the dating guru space. And I was like, why are you giving people, like, why is your job this was her job, giving people dating advice?

Malcolm: And I was like, When you don't have a good relationship or even have a partner right now, and she goes I date more than any other dating coach I know and I'm like that does seem true. That does seem true. But I don't know. I think, and then this could be a cultural perspective as well.

Malcolm: That some cultures when they're trying to decide who to trust as a source of information, what they'll do is they'll look towards the crowd, right? They'll say, who is the crowd looking to as a source of information, or they'll look to some sort of External certifying agency, right? So yeah, this people might have had 10 terrible marriages, but they do have their Ph.

Malcolm: D. in relationship counseling. Whereas I think our cultural perspective places [00:02:00] a huge amount of weight on what the individual has been able to achieve within their own life. And the belief that you can't really make it past that point.

Simone: Yeah. So if you are getting advice from someone, keep in mind that it will get you to exactly where they are now. So if you really like where someone is getting life advice for them is. is pretty good. But just doing it because they are famous or they're telling you things that sound or feel good probably not the best course of action to take.

Malcolm: And this can be a problem with it was in what we call the the viral life coach sort of meme. When we talk about memetic clusters, it began to grow accidentally. I remember in the Bay area I was adjacent to this community. Where it started was one life coach and then everyone they were coaching ended up becoming life coaches.

Malcolm: No, which makes

Simone: perfect sense because what, like what does the life coach have figured out how to do? They figured out how to be a life coach. So they're probably going to [00:03:00] lead people in that general direction.

Malcolm: But it's I don't think that's what they went. If you had been able to take them aside at the beginning and said, is your goal was this to become a life coach?

Malcolm: They might've said no. And then this is the thing. Not all life coaches are like this. Some life coaches are like specifically very good at preventing this. And I think that there's a way that you can sort for this, look at their other clients who have worked with them for a while. Did they end up becoming more successful or did they end up becoming less successful?

Simone: This is, there's something that's really interesting about this. Actually, this might be too much of a tangent, but we were introduced at one point to a company that would take law firms and lawyers and actually show you their outcomes vis a vis specific judges, for example, and in certain courts.

Simone: And What you realize after looking at this data, there's this profound disconnect in the legal industry, at least in the United States, between like expensive law firms, prestigious law firms, famous lawyers, and actually good court records. And you could see on the graphs, like the track record [00:04:00] of different lawyers.

Simone: Against certain judges in certain districts. So if your case is likely to end up in front of this particular judge, often what you're doing is if someone's Oh yeah, like this lawyer sees this judge, like all the time, they know them really well. You're like, you're going to be in really good hands.

Simone: And then you look and you see there's all these judges that like, or sorry, lawyers, there are all these lawyers who see certain judges, a ton. But they like always lose, they always lose and no one knows that going into it because unfortunately the system isn't set up in a way where people are looking at outcomes. Instead, they're looking at prestige. They're looking at signaling. They're looking at how people choose to market themselves. And I think this is not just something that's a problem in the legal industry.

Simone: It's a problem. Also look at teaching, like where are teachers going to get you? They're going to get you where they are. And that's why many people, when they're young, want to be a teacher when they grow up, of course.

Malcolm: And I think that it's critical, something to note was the lawyer example is this was a company.

Malcolm: I don't even know if the company is still around, but like this data was out there in public and not that [00:05:00] many people were using it. The vast majority of people, when choosing a lawyer, we're not looking at this, data that's out there about how frequently they won cases like theirs, but we're looking at the prestige of their firm or like marketing

Simone: materials.

Simone: And what blew our minds too, is that there seemed to be zero correlation. Between what you paid for and what you got in terms of outcomes.

Malcolm: Oh my God, this is just a lawyer, right? This is just hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's young people who go out there and take advice. from gurus just because they're like famous within their ideological circles and they're like this guy is ideologically approved or this girl is ideologically approved therefore their advice must be efficacious and it's important to remember that just because someone is smart it doesn't mean that they have great So when a person rises to fame within sort of life advice circles, there's typically three reasons that's going to happen, okay?

Malcolm: One, [00:06:00] that person is telling people what one specific ideological group wants to hear. But they're telling it to them in a way that like sounds smarter or more sophisticated than they're used to hearing it or edgier than they're used to hearing it or something it's what they already want to hear, but with some sort of spin put on it, some sort of flavor agent added.

Malcolm: The next is