General

Thanks for putting this here, there are some minor tweaks id do to your response. Unless im mistaken in my understanding of english, If you imply something it means you dont call it out because that would be explicit. So, its just that you imply something. I also wouldnt say that what is implied, is they are wrong, but that they are ignorant/unaware of the information you give them through advising them.

(but these details dont undermine what you try to convey)

So, ive thought quite a bit about this, since we talked in the chat, and i also discussed it with some friend of mine.

It boils down to narcissism, essentially. The person being incapable to go through that insult element, and instead being stuck at it, is percieving it as an attack on their ego that they must necesarily defeat. Its irrelevant if that "attack" was valid or not. That is a characteristic behavior of narcissistic people. The kind of relationship doesn't seem to matter. The aspects of one's personality that might react badly to this, is a result of narcissism. And moods generally don’t really alter someone's cognitive abilities (it would require something very severe to do that).

So, basically, considering if they are in a place to be better off with the advice, is a matter of considering if they are a narcissist or not.

But at this point, that is something that should be called out by itself. If there is no reason for one to turn down or refuse objectively useful (there are specific criteria to determine this) then that behavior should at least not be enabled.

It also doesnt matter if the narcissist get upset over this, because if they were to behave freely they would almost certainly create far greater frustration, trauma and irrationality through their interactions with other humans.


Having said that, there is something else i wanna say about this. The general common sense opinion on this topic (basically that its a shitty thing to give unsolicited advice) is a is a reflection of how widespread narcissism, and enabling of narcissism, is within our society. Basically two thirds, and possibly more, might be either narcissists or enablers, with the remaining people being healthy, in this regard at least. That's something very scary to think about 😥

Im considering "(uncolicited) advice" to strictly be what you'd consider "valid". For example, is the advice given on point, relative to what the reciever is troubled with?

If you just want to vent, for example, for something that you know how to solve, but nevertheless gets you frustrated, the problem is... how the problem is articulated by someone who might attempt to give advice. That is, its not a matter of finding a solution (since you already know that), but something else. In this case, its actually something i can't quite pin down really, but its something within the domain "I need to socialize".

Another criteria is, is the reciever of the advice already conciously aware of the information given? If yes, thats of course another case the advice is not "valid" (=helpful) That case shouldn't be difficult to manage. The reciever should just state that. It removes the need for you to guess if they already know what you told them.

You are basically right when you say the vast majority this is not the category that "uncoliced advice" falls in. I think thats also a problem because it makes it harder for us to identify errors.

With the case where the reciever is already aware, for example, the error is not that the advice given was not apropriate, because thats a valid logical consequence of missjudging. So the error made is not on somebody's behavior, but on somebody's thinking process.
Also, i find it interesting to try and map out all of these situations that result in unhelpful "uncolicited advice" . Categories like, self-serving, missjudgements, all these are valid possibilities.

You are touching on a lot of interesting issues, one being the "objectively helpfull (or unhelpful advice", the other is the possibility that someone who acts as giving (uncolicited) advice, in reality just self-serving himself in some way.

I think ive covered them pretty well on my last replies i wrote just now.

The first attempt may or may not be self serving, but it can go into that territory if you keep trying to force your advice onto unwilling parties.