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Neil comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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...Damn! That's exactly the kind of vague advice that HughRistik decries. Imagine teaching an extraterrestrial alien to smoke cigarettes.
You: Open the pack.
Alien: (looks at pack in a puzzled way)
You: Just tear it open, man
Alien: (tears pack in half, cigarette bits fly everywhere)
...
You: Put the cigarette in your mouth.
Alien: (stuffs entire cigarette into mouth)
And so on, and so forth. "Get out of the house" is a totally useless piece of advice for the kind of person that needs it. Okay, I'm out of my house right now, what next? You remind me of Alicorn who wouldn't stop insisting that finding potential dates in your social circle is "easy" if you "just do it".
(Related: I've entertained the idea of suggesting to Alicorn that she apply her superior understanding of women to teach pickup to male students. I imagine her entering the classroom, glancing at the audience composed of actual average guys and going "...oh, you meant that kind of average? I had no idea such people even existed. Obviously, teaching them to approach women would be disgusting and a gross betrayal of my sex. I'm outta here.")
I think your description of the alien with the cigarette pack highlights the fact the problem with advice often lies in the fact that it's too chunky. By that I mean the steps are described at too high a level. This can happen when there's a great difference in the levels of experience of the advisor and the advised, and the advisor has become so familiar with the processes they have been conceptually black boxed. In fact the black boxing is a necessary part of the process - you ride a bike well when you no longer think about how to ride a bike, and you socialise well when you're no longer aware of what you're doing to make your socialising successful. If the advisor doesn't realise that the advised has no idea how these black boxes work, the advice isn't worth much to him.
Which is exactly why I said elsewhere in this thread that the only good advice comes when the adviser has seen the advisee (or many other advisees) make mistakes, which has the effect of breaking up the adviser's black box.