[guzey]

>the best advice-givers will tell white-lies privately, even to people they love and respect, if the advice-seekers don't send ultra-clear ultra-proactive signals that they will not be hurt by the advice they seek

I think I tried to communicate this when suggesting asking for outrageous advice, but I think you're making this point better. Anyway, I added you comment to https://guzey.com/advice/#best-comments :)

[cjmb]

:) Thanks! And yes, I did read that part, and it is true, but I think it was getting at something slightly different.

"What are you not saying because you're scared I'll blame you if it fails" implies that the advice-giver has a certain mental model that didn't quite resonate with me.

Mostly I try to avoid hurting people who ask me for advice. A) because I care about them, and B) because very often the "right" answer could reduce their will-to-action in a completely counter-productive way.

(As a hypothetical relevant to HN -- 9 times out of 10, the "correct" advice to give your friend on their startup/product is to deliver a completely filter-free structured rant about all the ways their startup/product is complete and utter dogshit. "Correct" in the sense that their startup/product will be bad and need iteration, but also in the sense that founders/creators almost always have a Parent-Child-esque emotional connection to their creation, and without some external emotive-"knock" they will often rationalize away the need to make changes.

But of course that is incredibly poor form as a friend, which is your foremost relationship with this person, and not as a product-reviewer! And so you'll tend to give some nice comments and then some highly-couched "constructive" critique that signals you know they want some negative feedback, but don't trust them to handle it -- and as a result they won't really know where their product stands, and nothing improves.

As a prospective advice-seeker, you really can't over-signal your commitment to getting the other person's raw & emotional thoughts. "Swear" words tend to be one good way to signal this sort of thing in the English-speaking professional environment, but ultimately humans evolved to be master-tier readers of their friends' inner emotional state and if you feel a tightening in your gut when you get harsh advice, the advice-giver knows you feel it)

[CPLX]

> 9 times out of 10, the "correct" advice to give your friend on their startup/product is to deliver a completely filter-free structured rant about all the ways their startup/product is complete and utter dogshit.

But see it's more complicated than that.

I would say it's way more likely that the best advice you could give someone working on a new startup or product is to to convince them to stop being so negative and stop thinking everything they're doing is dogshit and to summon the self-confidence and charisma that comes from really believing in what you're doing, since that tends to have self-fulfilling effects.

Unless, of course, the person has delusional self-regard already, and are more likely to make the opposite mistake.

One reason why giving advice is so challenging is that it's always extremely context-driven.

[cjmb]

> But see it's more complicated than that

:) exactly!