[sanderjd]

I'm totally philosophically aligned with this article and enjoyed reading it, but I'm just interested to hear whether anyone else has this problem: More and more stuff I read seems to be name-droppy like this. For instance, I've been reading "The Psychology of Money" recently, and I'm enjoying it, but its style is a lot like this article; an endless series of anecdotes about famous and semi-famous people, with insights from the author tying them together. Is this a new trend of some kind, or has it just become more obvious to me lately?

Edit: Ha! I did not catch the part at the end where this is the same author as that book. Ok then!

[roenxi]

> Is this a new trend of some kind, or has it just become more obvious to me lately?

It is a classic trend. Anyone writing a book or trying to reach a wide audience has to cater for the fact that the audience has none of the skills required to assess complex claims. Most of the readers aren't going to be good at maths, are not going to have a grasp on the nuances of human behaviour and incentives, struggle with science, don't read history, etc, etc.

What most people are good at is copying successful people. So it is extremely common for people with large audiences to converge to a "Here is an example of a famous person, here is what they did. Here is another famous person, they did the same thing" style.

[sanderjd]

Interesting insight!

[idoh]

It’s not a new trend, it is common in non fiction writing. Everything Malcolm Gladwell writes is in this style, and the same for many non fiction business / self help type books.

[ajot]

"There’s this writing style in popular non-fiction that I’ll call the ‘Malcolm Gladwell method of shoving-a-story-in-your-face’. It substitutes argumentation for storytelling and anecdote, and in so doing sidesteps the difficulty of making a case, since the reader is too distracted by narrative to comprehend the point the author is actually attempting to make.

Whenever this happens, I take care to pay special attention, because often the point is banal, or flawed, or too inconsequential to stand on its own. (I happen to know this because I’ve used this technique a few times on this very blog, and I know from reader feedback how effective it is)."

https://commoncog.com/blog/range-book-summary/

[paulpauper]

It is annoying though when it get voted to the front page. You are expecting something that is interesting or insightful and it is just generic, repackaged investment insights/aphorisms/advice that is used as an indirect sales pitch to promote a likely equally mediocre investing service.

[jnsie]

Honestly it’s every business/investing/self-improvement/etc book. Clever anecdotes and analogies turning what should be a few paragraphs into a couple hundred pages. I can’t remember the last time I read a good book in one of the aforementioned categories!

[wmeredith]

Collecting these stories and weaving a narrative around them is basically productizing survivorship bias and many people have made a career of it. Just browse the bookshelf at your local Fedex Kinkos. E.g. Malcolm Gladwell, as was mentioned elsewhere in this thread.