Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Kelsey Roy]

I understand the wisdom in this concept. It is unwise to stake value in the advice of unhappy people while actively seeking inner peace. Similar to taking weight-loss advice from individuals unversed in nutrition principles. However, happiness is variable. The lack of happiness does not prohibit someone from having valuable knowledge. Just as mistakes can be learning experiences, so too can unhappy people teach peace-seekers what not to do. Advice should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Alex Reeves]

Thank you very much. Unhappy people can teach peace seekers 'what not to do' because they've been there and they'll have something to tell you so that you don't make the mistake they made that made them unhappy. Advice from a drunkard may even help you the day you least expect it. That's a fact.

[Wilkister Inzai Avagalwa]

The statement is both right and wrong depending on the situation of the person advising you. Some people might be doing it for a good course and others might be doing it to fix you in the same mess they are in.

[Bertha Jackson]

I think it depends on why the person is unhappy. If a person is unhappy because their loved one has died or left them, and they give me advice for the same reason, I may listen to them. Many people tried to advise me when my husband died, but they had never experienced what I was going through, so I did not listen to them. However, I had unhappy people, who had recently gone through the same experience, and I tended to listen to what they had to say more closely than the others.

I'm really sorry about your husband's death. I absolutely agree with you. People who haven't experienced grief or loss just try to be sympathetic as much as they can, but when they start giving you advice, it's a different thing altogether because they just don't understand the extent of your sorrow. It's certainly better to listen to people who have been through similar experiences.

Thank you for responding. For me, it is easier for me to listen to people I can relate to. Another example is taking financial advice from someone born into wealth and someone who had to work to gain wealth. I want advice from someone who knows the struggles poor people have to overcome to gain financial independence, security, and wealth. I could relate better to the steps they had to take.

[Aditi Mehta 1]

I completely disagree with this statement. Being unhappy does not mean that they'll be bad at giving advice. Their unhappiness should not be misunderstood with their ability to look at things with different perspectives.

[Jenni Schmitt]

It depends on what the advice is about. A mechanic doesn't have to be happy to give me car advice.

[meadowsem]

I am mixed on this one. I think that we should use high judgment when taking advice from anyone, end stop. We are the only ones living through our lives and we are the only ones who know the exact circumstances of our particular thing. I would absolutely take advice from an older woman whose children had grown up on raising children - because she has been there and done that. I wouldn't discount her advice because she doesn't have children the exact age of my children right now. Similarly I would for sure listen to an unhappy person who was happy once, if they could identify what made them happy and share it with me. They have lived it and are potentially wiser than I am.

[PuerAzaelis]

Depression is a normal response to a deranged world. it takes varying degrees of imbecility not to be depressed.

You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth—and who are luckily exempt from depression—would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age—more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Begin with the reverse hypothesis, like Copernicus and Einstein. You are depressed because you should be. You are entitled to your depression. In fact, you’d be deranged if you were not depressed. Consider the only adults who are never depressed: chuckleheads, California surfers, and fundamentalist Christians who believe they have had a personal encounter with Jesus and are saved for once and all. Would you trade your depression to become any of these?

Percy, Walker. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book . Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

For this reason I would not trust any advice from happy people and only accept it from unhappy people.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Depression is a normal response to a deranged world.

I would rather be happy than depressed.

I would choose inner peace over its opposite 10 times out of 10.

I'd rather enjoy the true happiness of inner peace than be 'normal'.

It's quite normal for people to be unhappy. It's quite normal for people to lack inner peace. It's quite normal for people to take advice from unhappy people (i.e. those lacking inner peace). It's quite normal for people to follow advice that will fail to give them the true happiness of inner peace. Thus, I choose to be very abnormal, and as a person who believes himself to have inner peace (a.k.a. "true happiness", "nirvana", "spiritual freedom", "free-spirtedness", etc.), I advise those who would choose take my advice to choose to be very abnormal.

In analogy, in the OP (Original Post), I also stated I don't take weight loss advice from fat people. It's very normal to be fat. If anything, their normality only makes their advice less valuable.

In a very noteworthy sense of the words, normal is never exceptional.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

I love and respect all people. However, in this human form, time, energy, money, and resources are very limited, so...

I don't take weight loss advice from morbidly obese people.

[...]
That doesn't mean blindly do the opposite of what they advise either. As explained in the book, to blindly do the opposite of what one commands makes you just as much a slave to the commands.

I disagree with this actually. While the overall idea of what you're saying makes sense, it's too generalized. What if a morbidly obese person is that way because of a chronic disease, but actually is a master of nutrition?

If I was making the argument that morbidly obese people never ever give correct or good weight loss advice, then such counter-examples would indeed prove me wrong.

However, that is not at all what I am saying.

Instead, a key point in the OP (Original Post) is how incredibly limited my time, money, and energy is in this human form as a single human. For instance, even if I read a whole book every day, and spent all my waking hours reading books, I still could not read 99.999%+ of all the books out there.

To spending time reading a book or taking someone's advice, it isn't enough for it to possibly be right or reliable. It is not even enough for it to be probably right or reliable. To be worthy of taking their advice their advice has to be the absolute most reliable.

If there was no "masters of nutrition" who also had the credentials of having proven their advice works by following it themselves and putting the proof into the pudding, then what you are saying would present a possible conflict or exception.

In analogy, imagine you were hiring for a very important job opening. There was only one opening, but there was thousands of people who had applied. Even the smallest blemish on a résumé would be enough to put in the 'no' column. Would someone who got fired from the last job for stealing always be a bad hire? No, but when there is plenty of other candidates who are equally qualified by all other measures and the only difference is that one fact, then it becomes a valid filter.

I'm not saying choose who take weight loss based solely on whether or not the person giving it is obese or not (or happy or not). I would use all sorts of criteria too, such as whether the person is a "master of nutrition". But there is way too many masters of nutrition to listen to them all, and generally you can only take the advice of one, at least one a time. If the single job opening I'm looking to hire someone to fill is being my weight loss advisor, being morbidly obese is a blemish on the résumé. And the job is way, way, way too competitive for that blemish to not have me put that résumé in the 'no' column. There are plenty of other candidates who are just as qualified (if not more so) by all other measures but who then also don't have that blemish, making them in total more qualified and reliable.

The question isn't are they reliable; it's are the very most reliable.

If the cost is the same, and the payout upon winning is the same, I'm not going to play a slot machine that gives me win 98% of the time when there's one sitting right next to it that gives me a win 99% of the time. It doesn't take much to not be the best candidate, or the statistically most reliable at something. All it takes is a small blemish on the résumé.


Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

The best bit of advice I have ever received is as follows.
"Don't take advice from anyone you wouldn't want to swap - at least part of their - lives with".

I really like that! I hadn't heard it before, so thank you very much for sharing!

[Julie Gebrosky]

It depends on what the advice is about. A mechanic doesn't have to be happy to give me car advice.

I think this is an excellent point! On the surface, it seems like it would make sense to not take advice from unhappy people because it seems like you would become unhappy. But if it’s a matter of fixing something like a vehicle, then it really doesn’t matter if they are happy or not.

Another point is that the other person may be saying what they wish they did to avoid being unhappy. For instance, a drug addict telling others not to try drugs because they wish they never had done so themselves.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Come to think of it, these so-called unhappy people may have been through many experiences that brought them to where they find themselves. They may have a thing or two, that is, lessons and advice to give someone who they think is going through the same path they went through that brought them to where they are. They're unhappy not because they wish to be, but because of some decisions they made that landed them in trouble and caused their unhappiness. Such people will surely have something to tell others to prevent them from going astray. An obese person can tell you not to eat junk because it was junkfood that made him obese. A poor person can advice you not to invest in crypto because crypto made him broke, and so on.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

With all the love and respect a man can have, I would advise those people to write their advice down on a letter, and then mail it to their own address.

The letter will arrive to the person they will be (i.e. their so-called future self) in about day or two. Then, if the advice works for that person, I would be very interested to spend my very limited time reading and possibly testing out the advice myself, once it's already been demonstrated to work by the person using themselves as the first test subject.

[Samantha Barnes 3]

I believe it is fair not to take advice from unhappy people. I, for one, value happiness above most other things, and if someone lacks an attribute that I place a high value on, then I would only doubt whatever advice they gave me.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

I understand the wisdom in this concept. It is unwise to stake value in the advice of unhappy people while actively seeking inner peace. Similar to taking weight-loss advice from individuals unversed in nutrition principles. However, happiness is variable. The lack of happiness does not prohibit someone from having valuable knowledge.

I agree.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

If one is given the choice to play on a double-zero roulette wheel versus a single-zero roulette wheel, and all else is the same, and one foolishly chooses the double-zero version despite the slightly lower chance of winning, then one could still win.

Needless to say, 10 times out of 10, I will choose the single-zero over the double-zero.

If there wasn't tons of extremely qualified reliable fit non-overweight people to take weight loss advice from, I would take advice from morbidly obese people. If there wasn't tons of happy people (i.e. tons of people who consistently enjoy the true happiness of consistent inner peace) from whom to take advice, then I would likely resort to taking advice from unhappy people.