Advice Is Poison

At least when it comes from the wrong mouth and lands on the wrong ears

a robed hand gives a vial labeled poison to another hand, cyberpunk style — by DALL·E

Beware Of The Dosage… And The Prescriber

Most of the time, advice is poison. It is also easy to administer, so we could say advice is readily available poison. If we add self-confidence and self-importance to the poison handler, we can become mass advisors, evangelists of our wisdom, and spreaders of our good word. Yet we crave advice, and advice can help us reach where we could not by ourselves. In a way, advice is like a drug whose effectiveness relies heavily on the dosage and the prescriber.

The Advice Business

Many genuinely benign people with the best intentions give advice when they should not. I can say I have. When we have achieved success, we may feel the urge to share it with those around us who are struggling like we were. We are keen to lend them a hand, to show them the way out of the rut, and to give them that final push they seem to be missing. Entire businesses are built around the idea of advising others. Someone finds success in a field and tries to replicate it and abstract it so others can benefit from it. As established above, sometimes this can be exceedingly valuable for those who receive the advice. However, often the venture fails miserably.