Error

Of course criticism is only a partially overlapping set with advice, but this post reminded me a bit of this take on giving and receiving criticism.

Executive summary: This post offers a practical framework for critically evaluating advice by assessing the advice giver’s awareness, experience, and intention, especially when navigating uncertainty or crises where poor advice can have outsized negative consequences.

Key points:

1. Not all advice should be followed—its usefulness depends on how well it matches your situation, which requires assessing the advice giver’s awareness of your context, relevant experience, and underlying intentions.

2. Emotional states—both yours and the advice giver’s—can bias how advice is given, received, and interpreted; recognizing this can improve judgment.

3. Advice may be less applicable if your background or goals differ significantly from common expectations, especially if you are on a non-standard or trailblazing path.

4. Crisis situations make good advice both more essential and harder to evaluate, due to limited resources, higher risk, and greater emotional influence.

5. When overwhelmed, prioritizing which advice to evaluate deeply, especially unsolicited advice, helps preserve mental bandwidth while still benefiting from support.

6. Ultimately, even meta-advice (like this post) should be critically assessed using the same framework; reasoning behind advice may be more valuable than the advice itself.

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.