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How To Win Friends & Influence People is a book by Dale Carnegie, first published in 1936.
I'm interested to know if anyone has read it. My friend has read around half of it and has apparently changed his outlook on life. I'm not so sure though. Has anyone here read it? Is it worth the time?

I haven't read it, but I question the ability for a book from 1936 to affect your views on people in this century.

I was thinking the same at first, but my friend explained to me it's a book about improving the way you get on with other people and yourself. I don't know if just 74 years would rule out the book's effect.

amomentlikethis wrote:I was thinking the same at first, but my friend explained to me it's a book about improving the way you get on with other people and yourself. I don't know if just 74 years would rule out the book's effect.

74 years has done wonders for human psychology, though.

I've never read it, but I know where to look for a copy I'm fairly certain exists in my house. I'm just very doubtful of its effectiveness. Seems to me that if what the book will teach you isn't intuitive for you already, then you're not going to get a whole lot of help from it. Are pieces of advice like "do people favors" and "listen more than you speak" really going to stick in people's minds in their day-to-day if they aren't already part of their personality?

SlappyMcGee wrote:74 years has done wonders for human psychology, though.

I realize this sounds (and is) retarded, but I was having an anonymous debate with someone at my school on the wall of a bathroom about this.
Some random dude complained about Psychology majors thinking they belong in the School of Engineering, and a Psych major responded with something. A natural trolling instinct welled up inside me, and so I told the Psych major to get his hippie pseudo-science bullshit out of my science curriculum and to come back when he quantifies something. Next week, I find an entire fucking paragraph on the wall about Milgram and Pavlov, and how psychology experiments adhere strictly to the rigors of science. With total disinterest in a meaningful conversation, I replied in turn that they were on the level of a middle school science class "experiment" because they couldn't possibly do a meaningfully good job of isolating specific causes or quantifying (much less identifying) the variables or outcomes, and were therefore incapable of concluding much of anything meaningful. He didn't reply again, so I scribbled something like this afterwards:

100 years of:
physics - integrated circuits, quantum field theory, large hadron collider
chemistry - modern medicine, the glory that is Febreeze
psychology - "people suck sometimes but maybe they don't" "different people think differently"

And that's the last that "conversation" "progressed."

You even troll in the bathroom? I can't decide if that's impressive or depressing.

Hey, there were subcultures and the internet! Psychology has been busy.

I dunno. The fact that I can tell most people more about themselves than they they themselves know with frightening accuracy for the past *twenty* years seems pretty good to me. Sure, I'm wrong a good amount too, but next time you hear a chick with a little girl's voice, ask her to say the alphabet. She'll giggle between E and M. Guaranteed.

SlappyMcGee wrote:74 years has done wonders for human psychology, though.

Wahahahahahaha.

Also, Tsukatu, that's hilarious.

I think it's really repulsive and stupid to not to have any doubt about your personality.

Tsukatu wrote:I'm just very doubtful of its effectiveness. Seems to me that if what the book will teach you isn't intuitive for you already, then you're not going to get a whole lot of help from it. Are pieces of advice like "do people favors" and "listen more than you speak" really going to stick in people's minds in their day-to-day if they aren't already part of their personality?

Yeah, I've never read it either but I'd agree with that. I've read a summary of the book's key points and they seem solid but hardly earth-shattering.