We treat advice as transferable wisdom, but most advice is autobiographical fiction dressed up as universal truth. Success advice especially is survivorship bias wearing a motivational speaker costume. The uncomfortable reality: generic advice is useless, specific advice is dangerous, and the best guidance is usually 'figure out your own situation.'
We celebrate effort as inherently virtuous, but most hard work is wasted. The uncomfortable truth: effort without direction is just expensive procrastination. Knowing when NOT to try hard matters more than grit.
The highest-status people in any field are often invisible to outsiders. Real status is illegible—it operates through subtle signals that only insiders recognize. This creates a strange dynamic: people optimize for fake status markers that impress strangers while missing the real game entirely.