Are there other people who think Naval Ravikant has zero original ideas and his real competence is speech?

Naval always comes off as pretentious/didactic, in my opinion. I respect his accomplishments and ideas but his ego is really off the charts. What makes it worse is his legion of fans that hang off his every word.

"I've never read anything that wasn't a bad regurgitation of ideas better presented elsewhere from this guy, and I have to wonder why he has amassed such a following."

I wrote this 2 months ago, my opinion hasn't changed. I guess there are worse charlatans out there (ribbonfarm springs to mind) but why should one waste his/her time reading chewed takes by someone who doesn't seem to have a single original thought-idea streak in him.

Now I'm really interested in your book recommendations.

Start with:

Varela / Maturana - The Tree of Knowledge

Miller - Living Systems

Prepare to have your mind blown apart.

Why should I care whether an idea is original ?

If he offers me a bunch of true and useful ideas, in a single place, and in a useful form, that seems valuable to me.

For the same reason why you shouldn’t listen to Tony Robbins. Second hand ideas are repackaged to induce emotions for reasons and causes potentially unrelated to the original.

Tony Robbins is a bullshiter. That's why I don't listen to him.

I listened to Naval with a critical eye, and read criticisms from HN. His ideas seems useful, but tilted towards selling Entrepreneurship as the only way to become wealthy, and creating the feeling that's his path is a safe bet.

How beyond that does he manipulate his audience ?

I'm wary of most entrepreneurs, investors, and "thought leaders" offering advice as they tend to either be self-serving, productivity porn, or deep-seeming ideas that are easily said but impossible to implement. And, all too often, they only have a platform or "success" because of a huge head start from family wealth or from being an outright sociopath (or both).

What % are from family wealth?

I don't know, and the specific percent isn't the point. I'd encourage you to critically read bios of any Silicon Valley idols you might have, with an eye towards this.

My personal epiphany came about 10 years ago. I was in an incubator in SF, and some investor came to give a talk about fundraising. They heavily emphasized that many startups do a friends-and-family round to bridge them to a proper seed round-- nothing major, just get 20k from 5 family members and you should be good until you have something to show angel investors. My two co-founders and I (all from the Midwest) realized that we couldn't even come up with five people to ask for 20k because all of us came from pretty modest families.

These are the types of privileges that get glossed over in success stories. To be successful you, more likely than not, need to either have money or have connections to money. Everyone likes a good underdog story, but those founders are more like lottery winners than anything else.

So, coming from that lens, it's hard to take advice seriously from "successful" entrepreneurs. It's sort of our industry's equivalent of "just stop eating avocado toast and you'll become a millionaire."

Naval was born poor.

He attended one of the best high schools in the entire US, Stuyvesant. That's a privileged upbringing where it counts.

Students get into Stuyvesant based on an exam. Those who score highest (regardless where they come from, race, ethnicity, or income level) are allowed in.

That's a "privilege" he earned.

Elon was born rich.

I wasn't arguing anything about any particular person, but rather commenting that a lot of the entrepreneurs and investors that get fetishized around here found their "success" from family wealth or by doing some sociopath-level things. There are obviously exceptions, and maybe Naval is one of them, but I've read enough Silicon Valley biographies to become pretty skeptical of this entire genre of business/self-help/productivity hack books/blogs/tweets.

Neither do 99% of modern authors you find on Amazon.

It doesn’t make all of them bad authors, sometimes the talant is in the way you communicate known ideas.

I'm not sure if he has zero original ideas, but I think his ideas have very narrow scope. There is another thinker which I think is overrated - Balaji Srinivasan. At the same time I'm becomming a big fan of Jordan Peterson - his ideas are much closer to the real life and very relevant.

I was a follower for some time, several years ago. His biblical series are a highlight. I lost him at the “12 rules” book, came to see it as wrapping surface things in fancy confusing language, and I can’t unsee this smoke and mirrors since. He’s a knowledgeable professor and independent thinker, but he has become too big in my opinion.

There is no denying that Jordan Peterson is a troubled man, and he speaks from a position of a troubled man, you can hear it in his voice. This makes him, I think, authentic. Conversely Naval and the other modern thinkers talk from a position of privilege and success, which is not relevant for the majority of the people.

It is obvious that Jordan Peterson has seen and experienced misfortune. For most of us, it's much easier to relate to his ideas, than to those of the self-proclaimed modern gurus and egomaniacs from Silicon Valley.

His books are very verbose and boring, he covers too much stuff. I admit that I couldn't finish any of them. There are however excerpt from his lectures and interviews on Youtube which are spot on - very clear and direct.

At some point Jordan Peterson lost his way. Not sure if was due to his substance abuse issues or what, but he’s no longer relevant.

The fact he's being actively discussed in a thread about books that changed one's life, and your only criticism of the man is an ad hominem, would suggest that he's still very relevant.

I don't care about Peterson. I don't have time to study every intellectual's work. The signals I continually get about Peterson are that he's a hypocritical conservative sexist. Hypocritical in the sense that he presumes to have the answers for life, while landing in a coma due to drug abuse.

Ad hominems are relevant when the person's work involves telling people how to be.