According to my parents, certain behaviors are immoral if you can explain why you're doing them.
Overreacting to a parent listening in on your phone call or using physical coercion (not hitting me, just grabbing me and blocking my movements) when they claim good intentions? Teenage hormones.
Stating that you have a precommitment to react negatively to people who wiretap or use force on me, even when it's costly for me to do so? Morally wrong.
[Yes, I realize that the actual moral here is "Don't tell people you understand the concept of precommitments, just pretend to be an irrational actor". This isn't an example of advice being wrong, just an example of advice needing to be clarified.]
I think this is a usual intuition. Seems wrong to me, but I don't know how exactly to fix it.
I am similarly frustrated by moral intuitions which follow this pattern: (1) Imagine that you see a drowning person, and you are a good swimmer. Is it your moral duty to save them? Yes, it is. (2) Now imagine that you see a drowning person, but you absolutely can't swim. Is it your moral duty to try saving them? No, it isn't; you would probably just kill yourself and achieve nothing. (3) There is no urgent situation. You just have a choice between learning to swim ...
Several weeks ago I wrote a heavily upvoted post called Don't Be Afraid of Asking Personally Important Questions on LessWrong. I thought it would only be due diligence if I tried to track users on LessWrong who have received advice on this site and it's backfired. In other words, to avoid bias in the record, we might notice what LessWrong as a community is bad at giving advice about. So, I'm seeking feedback. If you have anecdotes or data of how a plan or advice directly from LessWrong backfired, failed, or didn't lead to satisfaction, please share below.