I think people take Naval much more seriously than he takes himself - but, I don’t follow him on Twitter (where he said he’s something of a troll) - that’s just the sense I got from talking to him.
I think people like me just like how he puts some complex things into simple words. Don't understand why people gets pissed off someone tweeting into the wild, like he never asked anyone to follow him or listen to him.
Mmm. I think part of it is I'm just sad it's not me. I'd love to have people hanging off my every word. But I also think most of his stuff is just ok, not great.
If podcasts were solely promotions of speakers, no one would listen.
Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion.
If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity.
To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say about things they are experts in and Joe Rogan is a good interviewer who asks good questions and lets the quests talk.
Not to mention that interviews with people are just a subset of podcasts.
> If podcasts were solely promotions of speakers, no one would listen.
A podcast isn't solely self-promotion, that's like a TV show only with ads. Of course they give you "content" as well. But the purpose, from the perspective of the participants, is to grow your audience. Ie. increase your celebrity. Which is why I thought his advice to avoid celebrity while at the same time actively trying to obtain a greater level of it was p funny.
> Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion.
Yet they go on for specific promotional purposes. Mike was returning to fighting, Bernie was in the middle of his campaign for President.
> If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity.
Again, this has nothing to do with seeking further recognition / celebrity.
> To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say
Ok you're just repeating the same thing over and over.
I think one thing he does a great job of is balancing concerns around monetary success and general life goals.
I think people with advice tend to really emphasize one and demphasize or even demean the other. Like if I hear someone advocating for meditation it seems to frequently come along with some kind of money is evil message (certainly not always)
Naval speaks about money sometimes and he tends to speak about it as a neutral tool. He also speaks about a wide range of other things and doesnt seem to need to wrap every other point into something financial.
This is something I do t feel like I hear a lot of and he again just seems to have exceptional clarity on these types of issues.
Yeah, I hate the self help/aphorism types, but his wisdom/breaking down of how to make wealth is great. Some of it is obvious, but he hammers in the point. I really dont think his ego is that bad
Somewhat agree. One of the life hacks I have picked up (not necessary from him) is to look at the advice without the associations with the person.
E.g., I really admire Warren Buffet and Bill Gates a lot but doesn't mean I all their ideas work for me. The same goes for people I dislike (some self-promoters ;)) but some of the advice from people I don't like has been actually helpful for me. So.. tl;dr : It's the message, not the medium :)
> I think the smartest people can explain things to a child. If you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t know it. It’s a common saying and it’s very true.
This is really true. During covid, I think a lot of us parents are learning that with our children. The subjects we know really well we can explain to them in easy to understand language, even advanced topics like programming and math.
Middle brow dismissal. It’s like the people who dismiss productivity advice as all being the same when the reason it’s mostly the same is it works and the doing it is the hard part.
> Paul Graham, News.YC’s moderator emeritus, says that “The defining quality of the middlebrow dismissal is that it’s a cache dump of the writer’s prejudices…” This probably explains why they’re so common. It’s natural to see any news story as confirmation of your existing prejudices—but it’s easy to read confirmation where it’s not there.
We started using the term "shallow dismissal" after a while (it appears in the site guidelines that way) because the word middlebrow is more triggering to people. It's more likely to land as a judgment on the person, where the word shallow is more able to bind to the comment, which is where it belongs.
Nothing, but the actual engagement with any of these ideas is approximately 0%. In a work presenting itself as the collected Almanack of Wisdom by a Wise Man, one would hope to see more than pithy collection of buzzwords and advice, all centered on "Getting rich." If the primary reason you're interested in Buddhist techniques is to make money, I think you may have missed the point.
If Silicon Valley (the satirical TV show) had a book version, it would look something like this.
> If Silicon Valley (the satirical TV show) had a book version, it would look something like this.
This can't be farther than the truth. I advise you at least try to peruse it a bit before resorting to such commentary. The point isn't to make money at all.
Right off the bat, he makes some pretty silly arguments, such as: people/journalists only criticize the rich because they're playing a status game and want to be rich too. That's it. It really is that simple according to Naval.
His entire oeuvre has the same level of intellectual calibre.
Yeah, the problem is if you’ve read all the same books as Naval, then you know where much of his tweets and ‘wisdom’ are coming from, but he never credits the source, instead implicitly passing it off as his own.
By way of comparison, one of his idols, Nassim Taleb, enthusiastically credits the sources of any thought or idea that is not his own, but which has informed and enriched his own original ideas. He makes that distinction clear in his tweets, papers, and books, the latter two extensively throughout the text, footnotes, and appendices.
It would be cool and admirable if Naval were using his platform to similarly boost his sources by crediting them more, and showing how their ideas have informed his own. Rather than commingling their and his ideas and implicitly taking credit for all of it.
That his ‘cult’ or followers don’t seem to see this suggests they either haven’t read extensively enough to recognize the sources, or they have and simply gravitate to someone like Naval confirming things they already believe.
This is really valid criticism which not only Naval is guilty, but most of the other intellectual personas on Twitter too.
I've always been interested not just in the ideas per se (which are often useful, no doubt) but also how they came to be, and I've had more than one instance where I wanted to trace back where they adapted the idea and I can't find it that easily.
That said, it may be the medium's fault, as the inherent character limit only allows for so much information that references and relevant information are considered way lesser in terms of priority... which in turn I think says something about the nature of ideas themselves.
No, Taleb has extensively credited Mandelbrot in his books and papers, and in public appearances with Mandelbrot, and has even called Mandelbrot his mentor. There’s not much more he could do to credit Mandlebrot.
“ Your summary says “Productize yourself”—what does that mean?
“Productize” and “yourself.” “Yourself ” has uniqueness. “Productize” has leverage. “Yourself” has accountability. “Productize” has specific knowledge. “Yourself ” also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.”
It’s telling that this is what passes for wisdom in Silicon Valley. You’d be better off reading some Aristotle.
You would certainly become a deeper, more authentic, and more original person filling your mind with long-form philosophical reasoning then a collection of pop Twitter aphorisms.
44 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadNaval is an exceptionally wise person and speaks with amazing clarity. I think people would enjoy him if they took some time to listen to him talk.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
Podcasts are of course unpaid and solely made to promote the speakers.
Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion.
If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity.
To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say about things they are experts in and Joe Rogan is a good interviewer who asks good questions and lets the quests talk.
Not to mention that interviews with people are just a subset of podcasts.
A podcast isn't solely self-promotion, that's like a TV show only with ads. Of course they give you "content" as well. But the purpose, from the perspective of the participants, is to grow your audience. Ie. increase your celebrity. Which is why I thought his advice to avoid celebrity while at the same time actively trying to obtain a greater level of it was p funny.
> Mike Tyson or Bernie Sanders or any other guest on Joe Rogan's podcast doesn't need further promotion.
Yet they go on for specific promotional purposes. Mike was returning to fighting, Bernie was in the middle of his campaign for President.
> If you're a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast you already are a celebrity.
Again, this has nothing to do with seeking further recognition / celebrity.
> To state the obvious: people listen to Joe Rogan podcast because they are interested in what the guests have to say
Ok you're just repeating the same thing over and over.
I think people with advice tend to really emphasize one and demphasize or even demean the other. Like if I hear someone advocating for meditation it seems to frequently come along with some kind of money is evil message (certainly not always)
Naval speaks about money sometimes and he tends to speak about it as a neutral tool. He also speaks about a wide range of other things and doesnt seem to need to wrap every other point into something financial.
This is something I do t feel like I hear a lot of and he again just seems to have exceptional clarity on these types of issues.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306249404156751872.html
This is really true. During covid, I think a lot of us parents are learning that with our children. The subjects we know really well we can explain to them in easy to understand language, even advanced topics like programming and math.
- Rational
- Buddhism
- Rational Buddhism
- Meditation
- Habits
- Accountability
- Happiness is a choice
- Prioritize
- Sapiens as a top 'recommended book'
- And, to top it all off: Foreword by Tim Ferriss.
Yep, I think we've covered them all.
> Paul Graham, News.YC’s moderator emeritus, says that “The defining quality of the middlebrow dismissal is that it’s a cache dump of the writer’s prejudices…” This probably explains why they’re so common. It’s natural to see any news story as confirmation of your existing prejudices—but it’s easy to read confirmation where it’s not there.
http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
If Silicon Valley (the satirical TV show) had a book version, it would look something like this.
This can't be farther than the truth. I advise you at least try to peruse it a bit before resorting to such commentary. The point isn't to make money at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-TZqOsVCNM
Right off the bat, he makes some pretty silly arguments, such as: people/journalists only criticize the rich because they're playing a status game and want to be rich too. That's it. It really is that simple according to Naval.
His entire oeuvre has the same level of intellectual calibre.
why just the lifeless artifacts for the disk or the dead-tree?
why can't we read the almanack on the web like a clean blogpost or a series of short chapters?
edit: we can. it was down low on the scroll on my mobile. tx!
By way of comparison, one of his idols, Nassim Taleb, enthusiastically credits the sources of any thought or idea that is not his own, but which has informed and enriched his own original ideas. He makes that distinction clear in his tweets, papers, and books, the latter two extensively throughout the text, footnotes, and appendices.
It would be cool and admirable if Naval were using his platform to similarly boost his sources by crediting them more, and showing how their ideas have informed his own. Rather than commingling their and his ideas and implicitly taking credit for all of it.
That his ‘cult’ or followers don’t seem to see this suggests they either haven’t read extensively enough to recognize the sources, or they have and simply gravitate to someone like Naval confirming things they already believe.
I've always been interested not just in the ideas per se (which are often useful, no doubt) but also how they came to be, and I've had more than one instance where I wanted to trace back where they adapted the idea and I can't find it that easily.
That said, it may be the medium's fault, as the inherent character limit only allows for so much information that references and relevant information are considered way lesser in terms of priority... which in turn I think says something about the nature of ideas themselves.
“Productize” and “yourself.” “Yourself ” has uniqueness. “Productize” has leverage. “Yourself” has accountability. “Productize” has specific knowledge. “Yourself ” also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.”
It’s telling that this is what passes for wisdom in Silicon Valley. You’d be better off reading some Aristotle.