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wadavis comments on Open thread, Oct. 27 - Nov. 2, 2014 - Less Wrong
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There have been discussions here in the past about whether "extreme", lesswrong-style rationality is actually useful, and why we don't have many extremely successful people as members of the community.
I've noticed that Ramit Sethi often uses concepts we talk about here, but under different names. I'm not sure if he's as high a level as we're looking for as evidence, but he appears to be extremely successful as a businessman. I think he started out in life/career coaching, and then switched to selling online courses when he got popular. His stuff is generally around the theme of "how to win at life", but focused on his own definition of that, which is mainly having a profitable and interesting career. (He has a lot of free content which is only inconvenience-walled by being part of a mailing list - this video is one of those things.)
I'm curious if anyone else here knows of him, and what you think of him.
Fully agree that he uses concepts used with less wrong, under different names. And I've seen him referenced frequently on less wrong as somewhere to look for rational financial / career advice.
I follow his free material, it has provided me with inspiration/direction/confidence to aggressively pursue increased compensation, successfully. I've been tempted to purchase his material before, but am always discouraged last second by the smell of snake oil.
I've been doing the same thing, for a while. I also get turned off a bit by the snake oil, and I've been following some of the mailing lists long enough that the content starts to feel repetitive. I might still buy, if he ever put out anything inexpensive (doesn't seem likely, but Jeff Walker did a while ago even though his business has a similar strategy, so it might happen..).
I wonder if everyone gets that slight snake oil feeling from him? And in particular, whether the kinds of marketing he's using still work when the reader recognizes what tactic is being used.
The question kept coming up; If I can smell snake oil, am I the target audience?
Even if it is legit and honest (I think it is), it kept on reminding me of nigerian phishers using poor language to discourage all but the most gullible from wasting their time.