Exposure to myriads of opinions threatens naïve people, for they fail to realise that everyone tends to be selfish. Advice may harm these suggestible people.

Therefore, stay aware and alert. Advice, motivated by engrained beliefs, is not black and white, i.e. good or bad. Rather, it proves useful or useless.

We produce better interactions if we can tell science-backed useful insight from closed-minded poppycock. Advice givers’ experiences matter though contextual interpretation makes fruits of advice.

Something Motivates Every Deed

We are selfish beings. Though our wirings are more complex than those attracting bees to nectar, self-preservation persists.

The advice giver’s faults

1. Instinctiveness

Instinctiveness may help survive, fill our mindless time, or avert injury, etc. Some are instinctively altruistic, i.e. helpful. However, advice with no conscious thought dooms.

2. Ill intentions

By contrast, not all people are so gullible; some use dead-end leads to mislead intentionally. Thus, they prey on or take advantage of suggestible people.

The advice receiver’s biggest mistake

The halo effect

Rich people may not also be happy, and grief may not stem from poverty.

Celebrities’ advice will not give fruits, yet we group them together as they are popular. We should not value strangers’ advice. Believing beautiful people do well in all fields, we abandon important bases, e.g. everyone promises limited expertise.

The classes of advice

Useful advice

1. Advice from information, not data.

2. Advice learned from experience, e.g. insight.

3. Tested advice.

4. Advice from locals.

5. Expert advice.

Useless advice

1. Advice that is only word of mouth.

2. Advice motivated by self-preservation.

3. Advice in fraud form.

4. Advice just to maintain alliance.

5. Advice without thought.

Why Do People Advise?

We altruistic social beings advise freely yet keeping hopes. The deeper intentions vary, too.

Thoughtless advice

Thoughtless advice results from instinctiveness and lacks conscious thought. For our habit, thoughtless advice spreads to break silences. Yet thoughtless–or mindless–advice may cause chaos. The urge to entertain, adapt, and help drive mindless advice.

Professional advice

Professional advisors skilled in their areas are qualified give advice in fields that they have insight on. Again, transparent money transactions ensure that both parties benefit. Hence, monetary advice is precious. However, natural altruism is selfless and excludes money.

Misleading advice

Misleading advice poisons the concept of altruism and breaks trust. Misleading others may benefit us. The competitive urge to sabotage overpowers the sanity of some people. Then, naïve contacts fall into their net that parallels the lie rabbithole. Next, we fail to categorise advice from misleading conspirators for long like helpless prey.

Heartfelt advice

Heartfelt advice comes from near and dear ones. “You should drink a glass of water before going to bed, it will reduce wrinkles” comes from experience. Still, it may be wrong. Regardless of its content, heartfelt advice, delivered well, boosts morale, and we seldom look into it.

Beware of Online Advice

Marketers coerce you into buying their products whereas scammers want your money. The internet helps hide, pretend, and target you.

The shelter of anonymity

A teenager has, for no reason outside of playing video games, around five Gmail accounts. How easy it is to create one! Again, sites other than social media let you view, comment, and post, tracing your IP without verifying your identity. Moreover, they mock fun at this with generic icons of the grey-hatted hooded man. The web is a scammer’s paradise.

A wide net of unsuspecting people

Many people on the internet disregard the basic safety rules. Once again, many venture far with no skills to deal with people. The cunning prey on the resultant fear–that of the unknown. With a blank face, one spews out deceptive, false, and manipulative words facing no tactile tribulation.

How jobs ruin altruism

The new normal is scary, i.e. that companies pay people to review a product they have never used is. For cheap, marketers get dozens of people to leave faceless reviews as social “proof” of their supremacy. Who knows how much undisclosed advertising we see on YouTube every day–or our kids do?

In sum, pay heed to why people treat you the way they do, but act accordingly, too. How innate motives motivate people will shock you.

The same “prey and hunter” model applies to scammers and victims that does to sheep and wolves. Especially online, we must stay aware and alert.

The truth on advice: the wolf lives longer than sheep. Analyse, verify, and judge information; and discard flimsy data to get the best from advice.