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by damnitbuilds 9 days ago
Books like this are for tech bros what horoscopes are for sad old ladies.

They are full of platitudes that sound relevant to people's problems and desires, that pretend to be based on science but have no actual basis in facts, provably do not work, and yet are still popular amongst the people they let down again and again.

Anyone who could write a book with advice that worked the way this purports to would be too rich to need Kickstarter to fund his books, for a start.
1 comments
eries 9 days ago
My friend, I know you think this is a criticism. It's pretty obvious that you haven't read the book. I'd encourage you to do so, or at least ask yourself, "Why are you commenting on a book you haven't read?" The answer must be that you're upset about a different book or about a whole class of books that have done you wrong. That's fair. I know what you're talking about. But for what it's worth, I tried really hard to make this book different. If you check the end notes, you'll see that I drew on quite a lot of research to try and make a series of evidence-based claims.

And if you really want to live in a world where people should be listened to on the basis of how rich they are, well, you don't really need to change anything, now do you?

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madibo3156 9 days ago
My friend, I know you think you're defending your position well, but you've done the opposite. Scrolling to the bottom of the comments and seeing this response from you is like speedrunning your books' one-star reviews and coming to the definitive conclusion that it's not for me. Thanks for saving my time.
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eries 9 days ago
Your comment made me smile because the book hasn't had a one-star review yet. Maybe you'll get to be the first.
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boca_honey 9 days ago
It's not about the reviews on some boomer platform like Amazon/Goodreads. It's about how out of touch this kind of book is. You hit the jackpot in the 2010's and because of that you might get some mainstream press and support from hardcore tech-bros for now but... I think you have no idea how culturally irrelevant (ie. uncool) a book like this is in 2026.

This is like an aerobics VHS in the 2000's. You might still get some sales because of older people... but you're done. You're no longer part of the culture. Get your speaking gigs / paid mailing list subscriptions while you can, I guess, because you'll sell 1/5 of what you sold before (being generous). It's all downhill after this.

Noticed how your HN submission is greyed out because of all the downvotes? That rarely happens in this site.

You should watch The Social Reckoning trailer which just came out. Check out the comments.

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damnitbuilds 9 days ago
"Noticed how your HN submission is greyed out because of all the downvotes?"

Downvotes mean nothing on HN, alas.

Factual statements are downvoted because some people don't like the facts quoted. And, worse, mods find that okay.

It makes HN a worse place for serious discussion and for finding out the facts about an issue, because what is discussed is driven by lazy, stupid people's sentiments.

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floxy 9 days ago
The original poster wasn't very tactful. But let's see if we can turn some lemons into lemonade. I do think there are a plethora of popular / best-selling "business" genre books that do have the vibe that the OP was hinting at. Reading the book description for "Incorruptible" at Amazon doesn't make me think that this book stands out from that crowd. How could the blurb be rewritten to emphasize that this book is truly different? Just including the sentence "This isn't another book of relavent-sounding platitudes" might help. Are there any falsifiable core principles in the book? If so, could you list those in the blurb? The blurb itself sounds kind of AI-ish:

"Incorruptible argues that this failure is not primarily ethical. It is structural."

...and with at least five em-dashes. Let's assume its not AI, but even then the blurb is very business-esque generic:

"Drawing on two decades"

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22drawing+on+two+decades%22

"a clear-eyed diagnosis and a practical blueprint for change"

...all sounds cliche. Your comments here on HN make it much more likely for me to read the book than the blurb ever would. But I'm not a best-selling author and maybe this is the sort of blurb that sells books to certain readers? Maybe authors don't have much of a say in how the blurb is worded?

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