I'm vaguely intrigued by this book although I haven't finished it yet. Is there an argumentative criticism of it anywhere?
Some stuff in it I've witnessed myself, several points contradict other 'advice' in this book - which I find a bit ironic but I always can rationalise that different situations require different approaches - and some just feel contrived and overboard. Perhaps not at Hollywood though.
It seems to have attracted a noticeable following within the alt-right circles which is... well, curious.
>but I always can rationalise that different situations require different approaches
This is the main criticism of Greene's approach, he has one approach, and if it doesn't work, you'll look mental. Alt righters like this approach because they can blame others for not following the rules instead of having to analyse their own personality. It's also a book that, if read in the right way, can excuse or even encourage all sorts of social atrocities. "I'm not being a racist cunt, I'm just keeping you in suspended terror!"
It's essentially quite a valid guide for becoming, or at least playacting, the 'alpha', but really nobody actually wants that other than weird redpillers. Social success and therefore influence is about having a balanced and somewhat pliable personality, not a one track party piece about being a strong leader.
The best criticism of the book is to read it while imagining how you'd actually react if someone else was behaving this way towards you.
I just got done reading that but I don't have anything much to add, your remarks are pretty much the same as what I thought of it. Lots of the rules also seem to overlap or repeat and some of them aren't really cohesive, I got the impression he wanted to write 50 rules as a nice round number but couldn't quite pull it off then left the stuff he wrote to fluff it out in there. At least some of the advice is realistic, which is a sight better than his Seduction book, the contents of that are entirely nonsense.
>It seems to have attracted a noticeable following within the alt-right circles which is... well, curious.
I think Peterson may have recommended it. Neil Strauss does too and there being overlap between the PUA, incel and alt-right communities is fairly evident.
Someone pointed out that while they're quite silly books in terms of life advice, they are quite interesting for their historical anecdotes.
>>6826 > The best criticism of the book is to read it while imagining how you'd actually react if someone else was behaving this way towards you.
This is one of the reasons why I did actually pick it, besides the general interest as to what might it be, the 'Hollywood back-stabber' handbook as I've heard some folks call it. I do have people around that behave that way. Not towards me, thankfully. At times I feel like I'm the clueless though, if not even on the loser side [0]; that'll fare for another reason to pick it, in order to lessen one's chance to get taken for a ride in life.
Still, books aren't a substitute for experience.
>>6828 I doubt that Peterson would have recommended it. I admit I haven't read his books but on a casual glance he seems rather reasonable - perhaps quite unexpectedly so for someone with a strong alt-right following. But I'm definitely biased against the right-wingers even if I tend to agree with them on some issues.
> they are quite interesting for their historical anecdotes.
Yes. But think I expected some 'realistic life advice', as you have put it.
[0] Another piece comes to mind here - the Gervais principle.
>>6832 For one he teaches that telling the truth is an absolute virtue, one that should be pursued at all times even if in the short term it causes discomfort. He says lying is like cheating reality and will eventually come back to hurt you.
>>6833 >You must beware of such people, for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power. They utilize strategies that cleverly disguise the nature of the manipulation involved. These types, for example, will often display their weakness and lack of power as a kind of moral virtue. But true powerlessness, without any motive of self-interest, would not publicize its weakness to gain sympathy or respect. Making a show of one's weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power (see Law 22, the Surrender Tactic).
The first duty of every star fleet officer is to the truth, whether scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which star fleet is based. And if you can't find it within your self to stand up and tell the truth about what really happened then you are an over socialized snowflake Marxist cuck.
>>6839 This post is quite amusing considering that the universe of Star Trek and specifically the United Federation of Planets is very obviously a post-scarcity, post-capitalism scientific utopia.
In my headcanon replicators can't replicate any elements heavier than iron, since anything heavier than that requires more energy to fuse than is released by its fusion. That's why it's possible to replicate food, but not, say, entire starships. Starships utilise heavier elements.
Chakotay replicates Janeway a Pocket Watch for her birthday in the End of Time special and she chastises him for wasting power. It can be done, it's just greedy on the dilithium and at that time they were on rations which I think he saved up and spunked all at once.
What is interesting is that you can recycle replicated items, but I don't know what the loss conversion is. There will be a loss, that much is obvious. The Star Trek Encyclopaedia would probably know.
The gold in gold-pressed latinum is frequently referred to as "worthless" in DS9, so replicators are clearly capable of producing heavy elements economically. I assume that there's some kind of quantum handwaving that makes latinum uniquely difficult to replicate.
Voyager is a bit of an edge case, because they're stranded light years from Federation territory. Within the Federation (even on the outer edges), it seems that most things are negligibly cheap - in Explorers (DS9 S03E22), Sisko and Jake built a Runabout-sized starship for shits and giggles.