If you happen to be on Twitter, TikTok, or YouTube, you can hardly escape titles such as "I did something wonderful in XXX days. Here is how I made it…" or "Before: my life was ugly and miserable. Now: I have all the delights I dreamed for. Here is how I transformed …" It seems they have magic while they don't. Chances are that they are monetizing the anecdotes. Even if we choose to believe them, it is increasingly difficult to tell whether their stories have any broader applicability other than themselves.
Some of the suggestions might be useful, while the others could be harmful or dangerous had we followed blindly. When the topic involves little room for variations or manipulations, the advice is likely to be useful. If you want to cook an exotic dish, you may follow a YouTube video posted by native chefs because they know the procedures to make it. There is not so much room for you to change the process or ingredients. You won't get the taste if you don't follow the recipe carefully.
Suppose you want to invest money and build your portfolio. You'd better not follow experts' advice without your own input and judgment. While there are some valuable rules in finance, such as diversification, asset allocation, and risk management, no universal strategies work for all. Because the markets are noisy, complex, and adaptive, no one obtains the whole truth, including the experts. All the suggestions or predictions are opinions, not facts. It is precarious to follow the so-called experts' recommendations blindly. Most of these experts do not have skin in the game as they do not disclose their portfolios. They benefit from giving suggestions even if the followers suffer severe financial loss. Of course, not all of them are that bad. Even if they aren't, we should be cautious when we take their advice seriously because our decision is much more consequential to us than to these experts.
When we want to build our own business, it is better to do it in our way because no one is in the same condition as us except ourselves. We can learn from successful stories, but we should distinguish anecdotes and bullshits from genuine lessons. One way to detect anecdotes and bullshits is to check if the story is impartial and original. Anecdotes and bullshits tend to tell a partial story and cherry-pick the part that favors the narratives. They intentionally omit the unfavorable part. A good suggestion always tell the pros and cons, and let people to decide. There are no such “no-brainers”.
Anything meaningful comes with a price, but it doesn’t always have a noticeable tag.