Tips and Tricks
Everywhere you turn, somebody is offering “tips and tricks” to do something faster, smarter, cheaper, easier, or whatever. “Little known secrets” is one of my favourite lines, because if they weren’t “little known”, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?
“Tips and tricks” can be enormously helpful to someone who already has a solid grasp of the basics and truly understands the big picture. If I can show an NHL player a better way to tape his hockey stick that will give him 5% more goals in a season, that’s worth something. If I can show a courtroom lawyer a question to insert in her examinations, and she gets admissions twice as often, that’s a pretty neat trick. But these cases assume primary mastery of the art in the first place, we’re just putting a cherry on top.
Where “tips and tricks” are useless, and sometimes even dangerous, is when the unskilled or the dabblers think there is a magic formula for accomplishing something which otherwise requires skill, training, or intelligence. “What the doctors don’t want you to know!” is a sure sign that some fraudster has designs on your money. “Little known facts that the police won’t tell you” might get your attention, but seriously, come on, are you going to buy that?
“Tips and tricks” appeal to our vanity and to our cognitive bias, the sense that we are smarter than average and just need a little help to prove it. The Tom Sawyer fence-painting story is all about the allure of “insiderism”. It’s almost a truism that the more outlandish the promise, the less useful the result. Thus a “trick” to use olive oil to remove sticky labels is not a promise to turn your life around or make your existence more fulfilling. But “hidden insider information” that will enable you to make $5000-10,000 per month in your spare time is probably no more than the come-on from someone who will show you how he suckers fools just like you out of $250, and how you can do it, too!
When I was a kid, my Dad used to offer my friends a stick of “smartness gum” for only five cents (which was big money back in the day). After they’d chewed for a while, they’d say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is just regular spearmint gum!” To which my Dad would answer, “See, you’re smarter already!”
He always gave the kid his money back, and everyone had a good laugh. But the point was made.
Lots of little “tips and tricks” are useful for those who already have the basis, but beware those who try to sell you “smartness gum”.