Whenever someone talks about mindfulness or stoicism, the name that pops to my head is Tim Ferris. Like a less crappier Joe Rogan with an actual brain maybe? I still listen to some of his podcast episodes because he gets guests who I want to learn about. But oh my god the narcissism! I get it the podcast is about success and how to succeed, but for the love of god try to take your head out of your own ass for a minute? I’ve listened to tens of hours if not hundreds and haven’t ever heard him talk about a single act of kindness or help he or his guests have ever done to strangers.
You know what he’ll bring up every day? Mindfulness or meditation or stoicism. Like buddy, if you can’t sleep it’s probably because you know you’re not a nice person deep down. No amount of meditation is gonna help that.
God I can't stand that kind of BS. Thanks for warning me, I'll be sure to avoid him.
Both supply and demand for these motivational charlatans are immense. Something tells me it's not about actual drive to be successful, because the most successful people aren't listening/reading that crap, they're too busy practicing, learning, etc. Instead I think it's a self-misdiagnosis (there's something wrong with me, and it's my motivation) and then the charlatans confirm that by saying "yes, listen to me, I'll give you a short high of confidence, come back for more!".
In reality the success addicts just aren't passionate about anything, and that's ok. What they need is to either (a) find their passion, and that takes time, an open mind, and trying different things or (b) accept that they aren't passionate and enjoy life in other ways.
Selfishness is not narcissism. Narcissism usually comes with selfishness, but you can't induce the other way round. It's interesting that you mention that Ferriss or his guests wouldn't talk about their acts of kindness, as that's exactly the kind of thing narcissists like to talk about (= virtue signalling).
> It's interesting that you mention that Ferriss or his guests wouldn't talk about their acts of kindness, as that's exactly the kind of thing narcissists like to talk about
Hadn't heard of him, but as an [ex]scientist I'd be fascinated to see the actual data showing any correlation between "narcissist" and "entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru"[0]
Put slightly different, how many people who shy away from attention end up famous for their podcasts?
That’s kinda like asking what’s the boundary between having wheels and being an aeroplane. Most planes have wheels, but as a car you could add infinitely many wheels without turning into a plane.
This seems like a weirdly vitriolic post. It's bursting with negative characterizations, (he's a narcissist, he's up his own ass, and that he's not a good person deep down) and the support you offer for these hateful words is... the fact that he doesn't talk about philanthropy?
I mean, it's not that he doesn't engage in philanthropy, because he does[0]. It's that he doesn't talk about philanthropy?
Is it possible--and I offer this in the spirit of friendship (mostly)--that you need to take your head out of your own ass for a minute?
I’m happy to take criticism of the tune of “head out anywhere”. Having said that if the best example of his philanthropy you could find is him donating all the money he made from Ukraine back to Ukraine, I hope you see the irony of it. He probably hoped to (and probably did) make more money by proclaiming this in public than actually sending.
Importantly, I didn’t use the word philanthropy because it’s clearly not the only or even a good way of helping people. It doesn’t even have to be strangers heck. The only time he and his guests discuss “not them” is when they could learn or extract something from said others.
This is a pretty weak example of philanthropy. Or a great prime example of what we consider philanthropy. Regardless the OP didn’t say philanthropy. They talked about general compassion. There is a lot that doesn’t overlap between the two.
Why don’t people generally call someone making $40K donation $10K philanthropy? It’s just charity. However Tim Ferris does some tepid Ukraine stuff and it’s philanthropy.
Tim Ferriss’ primary value is that he was well-connected.
When he could land great podcast guests or interview subjects and let them speak it turned out great.
When he brought on certain friends or acquaintances and they tried to discuss something together with Tim’s input playing a large role, it was anywhere from boring to a disappointing mess. I haven’t listened to his podcast for years after he had a string of pseudoscience guests pushing easily debunked ideas. I vividly remember one where Tim was clearly uneasy with the obvious nonsense his guest was pushing but he wouldn’t dare push back or question anything for any reason. Really disappointing.
Tim Ferriss has always been like that, though. His whole personal brand was built on the idea that he interviewed world-class experts and delivered their knowledge to you. His old blog was almost exclusively “guest posts” which is another way of saying he got other people to write the blog for him (brilliant marketing move).
I understand exactly what you're talking about. I genuinely can't listen to ideological podcasters who are shitty people. I don't mean ideologies I disagree with, I mean people with no compassion who try to tell you how to live.
Good example: Tim Pool. He's ideologically pretty close to me, but I can't stand him as a person. No thanks.
How is Tim Ferriss ideological or a shitty person? I think he’s trying real hard and doesn’t stomp on people. His success is also quite hard earned IMO.
His business was selling generic "herbal remedies" IIRC. Which is bad/predatory IMO. And going further to meta-hustle that this is salutary enough to recommend to others without any seeming compunction is meta-bad.
(I know it's bad posting something this dismissive in deeply nested comments, but I believe it is relevant information to the discussion which hasn't been mentioned elsewhere. I tried elaborating but the elaborated versions of this comment were more cynical/uncharitable, not less, so I'm keeping it short instead).
Are you referring to BrainQuicken? They sold regular supplements, mainly B vitamins and alpha lipoic acid, marketed as nootropics (which they are). I can't see what's wrong or unethical about that. Unless you think all kinds of resale are unethical?
It appears my recollection was incorrect, and I retract my initial claim. Yeah, it was more nootropic than herbal. Yes, th "neural accelerator" that is "100% guaranteed to work within 60 minutes of the first dose." (http://www.blackhat.be/toxic/brainquicken.html is the closest thing I can find to what looks like the original marketing blurb). One should be highly skeptical of such claims, but frankly it's not as bad as it was in my memory (though still outlandish/over the top), and I'll make a note to not be quite so mean about him in future. Thanks for your comment.
I've not read the book, but IIUC _The Four Hour Workweek_ has as its central idea that you can outsource most of your actual work to other people while accruing most of the wealth those others are creating.
Not exactly a mark of great compassion or kindness, if that's actually what's presented.
It goes deeper than that. He encourages this behaviour in all aspects of interactions - getting other people to look things up for you etc, while firewalling yourself from other people's requests for assistance, finding ways to be more efficient at your job and hiding this from your boss so you can use the time saving for your side hustle.
Well you can't scale a business if you rely on only yourself as the workforce, so you will at some point have to outsource work to other people. It doesn't matter where those people are located. It's certainly unkind to overwork or underpay people, no matter where they are in the world (which must be looked at relative to local salaries). But that's not at all what the book recommended.
We all profit off other people's work, and are profited off of. I personally don't find this inherently problematic, since it's not a zero sum game.
To reiterate my point: I think it's not per se unkind to profit off other people's work. It's all about _how_ it's done.
right, profiting from other people's labor is certainly not inherently wrong.
Collecting most of the income from a project while putting very little effort into it feels kind of skeezy to me, but I'm not sure I can tell you precisely what bothers me about that. There may not be any actual problems with it.
I have no idea what you are hinting at. Making guesses at other people‘s intentions and spewing one-liners doesn’t exactly invite a discussion. If you don’t like to discuss, why post here?
> I’ve listened to tens of hours if not hundreds and haven’t ever heard him talk about a single act of kindness or help he or his guests have ever done to strangers.
In that case, you might want to listen to the episode with Will MacAskill (of effective altruism fame):
Many other guests who seem to be genuinely kind people come to mind as well (e.g., Derek Sivers, Seth Godin, Debbie Millman) but it probably doesn't get any more obvious than with Will MacAskill that this show isn't about selfish or narcissistic endeavours.
How does having one guest or a couple guests who may be good people, change the general issue? A couple of people vs the majority doesn’t change the general sentiment.
It’s a common strategy for podcasters/big personalities and defenses of them to have examples of engaging with another side. Even those examples are few and far between compared to the norm. IE Joe Rogan or Lex Friedman having far more right wing or right wing sympathetic people than left wing people on their shows. That doesn’t mean anything bad in and of itself. The issue is acting like having at least one person from each side means the show and/or host are balanced unbiased people in this regard.
Well, that's not what the author of the parent comment wrote or seemed to imply.
As much as one example to the contrary might not automatically change a general sentiment or perception, one particular listener only having encountered what they perceive as narcissism or self-involved navel-gazing might just be down to sampling bias.
The point I was trying to make is that there clearly are examples from that particular podcast where guests at least aren't entirely motivated by selfish or narcissistic pursuits.
You know what he’ll bring up every day? Mindfulness or meditation or stoicism. Like buddy, if you can’t sleep it’s probably because you know you’re not a nice person deep down. No amount of meditation is gonna help that.