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Risto_Saarelma comments on Leveling Up in Rationality: A Personal Journey - Less Wrong
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I get a scummy vibe off Tim Ferriss and don't really feel like buying self-help that is being sold by namedropping him. Trying to sell a research program combining cutting-edge science and advanced philosophy by namedropping Tim Ferriss will make me walk away at a brisk pace.
I'll chime in to support Tim Ferriss. I read the 4-Hour Workweek in college and started a few businesses based on the model he described. One of them worked fairly well and is now my primary source of (largely passive) income. I've also had excellent results from the 4-Hour Body.
More generally, his general writings on "lifestyle design" (basically applied Epicureanism) are a great if not really mind-blowing source of insight. He is a fantastic salesmen, but being good at sales is actually not a bad or scummy thing, in my opinion. He has helped a lot of people, (like me) and I think he deserves credit for that.
Ferris strikes me as a master instrumental rationalist, but not necessarily a great purveyor of advice. Everything he does seems well-optimized to enhance his own reputation. The main purpose of his advice is to make him look like a guru rather than level up his readers. Ferris is a good example (substituting in your own values, unless you also want to be seen as a badass guru), if not a great teacher.
I think if he were optimizing his own reputation really well, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place.
My own exposure to Tim Ferriss has been very limited, but while I don't know if I would go so far as to say that he gives me a "scummy" vibe, I get the feeling that I ought to be treating him with more than a little suspicion.
Maybe it's impossible to maximize popularity in our population while still appealing to people who're skeptical or inclined to critical thinking. I'm reminded of this experiment, where the winning estimate is one that assumed a very low level of recursive thinking in the average participant. Trying to account for "smarter" participants would only have resulted in a less accurate answer. But Tim Ferriss's reputation is not so glowing that I expect that a person with the same resources at their disposal couldn't do better.
I think part of the problem is that he's openly manipulative and exploitative, which regardless of whether it works, is going to put people off - if only because they don't want people to think they are like Ferriss too. (Though they still pay close attention; it's all very Hansonian.)
For example, I have something of a standing invitation from an assistant to write a post for the Ferriss blog about brain training and dual n-back; no compensation, of course, since the traffic is supposed to be worth it to me. And it probably is, because it's a popular blog - I suspect just a link in the footer to my DNB FAQ and other pages would result in a traffic spike greater than I've ever gotten from Hacker News or Reddit or LessWrong. But nevertheless, I've found it hard to motivate myself to write such a post and haven't written it yet.
What Tim Ferris has nailed is goal-directed behavior. He's a master of instrumental rationality, in many ways.
It's been a while so I forget the details, but the vibe I got off reading his book was that the world would be a better place if it didn't have people like Tim Ferris in it.
I gave a negative review for his first book when it came out, but he is extremely effective and deliberate about his effectiveness. I've made no judgment call about whether or not the world is better off with Tim Ferris in it.
I have mixed feelings about Tim Ferriss. His books have plenty of legitimate advice, but he tends to understate the difficult of doing the things he talks about because "X made easy" is better for selling books than "how to do X effectively if you're willing to put a ton of work into it for long-term payoffs."
What do you mean by "scummy"?
Like he's the SEO age equivalent of the used car salesman cultural archetype.
Well, he did make his money as a snake-oil ("dietary supplement") salesman...