LessWrong essay: 'How to get answers' exposes why self-help advice often fails
A 52-intervention gym study found only 5 worked—what does that mean for clarity?
In a LessWrong essay, Elijah explores how people resolve confusion about topics like desire and causation, noting that most people may feel confident in ideas that are vague or contradictory. He cites research on gym attendance where, alongside three baseline components, 52 supplementary interventions were tested and only 5 provided additional benefit—and even interventions that seemed obviously helpful often didn’t work. He also discusses Darwin’s thinking on natural selection, which came 20 years before he published On the Origin of Species, but actually formed over just a couple of years of intensive thought. Elijah’s main takeaway: thinking is more constrained by historical context than we assume. He suspects most self-help-style advice is probably not helpful on average, but it may still serve as inspiration or a starting place when stuck.
- A 55-intervention gym study found only 5 effective, with the best boosting attendance by just 0.5 days/week
- Darwin's natural selection idea took only a couple years of focused thinking, not the apparent 20 years
- Elijah used ChatGPT to help read Galileo's 1632 'Dialogues' while researching historical thinking patterns
Why It Matters
Professionals should distrust flashy self-help tactics—most interventions fail, yet sustained, context-aware thinking still drives real breakthroughs.