Good advice is reproducible

Good Advice is Reproduceable

The factor you use to determine if an outcome or a course or some advice you find on the internet is real, is the reproducibility of the explanation.

But first, it absolutely has to be a good explanation. Go read my essay on "How to get exponentially smarter" to get a surface level understanding of that, or go read David Deutsch for the in-depth understanding of what a good explanation is.

It has to be reproducible. If you are copying a cooking recipe from a YouTube video and you do not get the exact meal you saw, then you are either missing an ingredient or the recipe is bullshit.

Cooking recipes on YouTube are less likely to be bullshit, given you are seeing all the ingredients and the entire process, unless the cook knows how to conjure magic tricks. I digress.

Apply that to the abstract content you find online. If someone says five steps to make $10,000 in two minutes, and you do the five steps and do not make the $10,000, then you are either missing an ingredient or it is bullshit.

If you are missing an ingredient, a good explanation would let you know. You would have the knowledge to figure out what is missing. For example, you realize it is not salty or peppery and can automatically infer that salt or pepper is the missing component.

That is oversimplified, because for complex goals; the missing ingredients are multivariate prerequisites and functions.

When the outcome fails, it is easy for the creator or you to fall back on the defense that you must have failed to follow the steps perfectly.

The ultimate missing ingredient is your lack of the unstated, prerequisite conditions or skills they never mentioned. Being able to get a good explanation of what is missing is the key insight here. If the source material does not help you diagnose the error, it is useless.

If you cannot reproduce the outcome, and you cannot get an honest, clear explanation of the missing ingredients, then you have just consumed bullshit.

Reflect on how much bullshit you have consumed in your life.