My other key takeway from this article was your reminder that it's an important, perhaps core, rationalist skill to learn to look past philosophical differences (law of attraction, religious belief, etc) with experts in any given field, not just self-help or anti-akrasia techniques. Apply your own filter and look for the underlying value. Don't just dismiss the source because some portion of their content is irrational.

Indeed. Or more precisely, distrust people's theories, but listen to their experiences and try to understand their methods, because there's often hidden gold. Ironically enough, just because somebody thinks that they're channelling a being from another dimension, doesn't mean that everything out of their mouth is nonsense.

But if you focus on what experiences they're saying you should get, in response to which inner attitudes or actions, then you can reduce what is said to something testable, and see for yourself if it performs as described. After that, you can always work on a better theory!

(At any rate, that's what I do... and I do it the same with bestselling books written by prestigious psychologists: ignore the theory, test the predictions.)