Comment by eries
8 hours ago
My friend, I know you think this is a criticism. It's pretty obvious that you haven't read the book. I'd encourage you to do so, or at least ask yourself, "Why are you commenting on a book you haven't read?" The answer must be that you're upset about a different book or about a whole class of books that have done you wrong. That's fair. I know what you're talking about. But for what it's worth, I tried really hard to make this book different. If you check the end notes, you'll see that I drew on quite a lot of research to try and make a series of evidence-based claims.
And if you really want to live in a world where people should be listened to on the basis of how rich they are, well, you don't really need to change anything, now do you?
My friend, I know you think you're defending your position well, but you've done the opposite. Scrolling to the bottom of the comments and seeing this response from you is like speedrunning your books' one-star reviews and coming to the definitive conclusion that it's not for me. Thanks for saving my time.
Your comment made me smile because the book hasn't had a one-star review yet. Maybe you'll get to be the first.
It's not about the reviews on some platform like Amazon/Goodreads. It's about how out of touch this kind of book is. You hit the jackpot in the 2010's and because of that you might get some mainstream press and support from hardcore tech-bros for now but... I think you have no idea how culturally irrelevant (ie. uncool) a book like this is in 2026.
This is like an aerobics VHS in the 2000's. You might still get some sales because of older people... but you're done. You're no longer part of the culture. Get your speaking gigs / paid mailing list subscriptions while you can, I guess, because it's over after this.
The original poster wasn't very tactful. But let's see if we can turn some lemons into lemonade. I do think there are a plethora of popular / best-selling "business" genre books that do have the vibe that the OP was hinting at. Reading the book description for "Incorruptible" at Amazon doesn't make me think that this book stands out from that crowd. How could the blurb be rewritten to emphasize that this book is truly different? Just including the sentence "This isn't another book of relavent-sounding platitudes" might help. Are there any falsifiable core principles in the book? If so, could you list those in the blurb? The blurb itself sounds kind of AI-ish:
"Incorruptible argues that this failure is not primarily ethical. It is structural."
...and with at least five em-dashes. Let's assume its not AI, but even then the blurb is very business-esque generic:
"Drawing on two decades"
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22drawing+on+two+decades%22
"a clear-eyed diagnosis and a practical blueprint for change"
...all sounds cliche. Your comments here on HN make it much more likely for me to read the book than the blurb ever would. But I'm not a best-selling author and maybe this is the sort of blurb that sells books to certain readers? Maybe authors don't have much of a say in how the blurb is worded?
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