alt Hacker News> I avoided this book for a long time. for some reason I got it in my head that it's a sort of red pilled book that teaches you how to manipulate people.
FWIW this book came out in the 1930s, long before "red pilling" was a thing. I've read it before and it's not about manipulating people unless you consider being a genuinely sincere person to be manipulative in some way. It's a good book, if a little outdated, and, if I could summarize it in one glib sentence, its lesson is "If you want people to like you, then be nice to them, be genuine, and show enthusiasm and interest in what they show enthusiasm and interest in."
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If Books Could Kill (which is notoriously against self-help books) did an episode on Dale Carnegie.
Even they said that he seemed to be a pretty alright guy who was genuinely nice to people in his personal life, not just in his public persona.
I've not read the book, but how can a book about talking to people (if that's what it is) be a "little outdated"?
Mr. Carnegie should update his book with a few sentences about how using LLMs to flatter people is not being genuine.
That said, it also has all the self help faults. It repeats itself a lot, is full of happy anecdotes that repeat the same thing yet again, and could have fit in a chapter.
I agree with you this was not Dale Carnegie's intent when he wrote the book, but alexmuresan probably takes issue because the "red pilling" crowd have used Carnegie's advice to manipulate people.
Personally, salespeople have randomly complimented me and repeated my name over and over, and on the receiving end it weirded me out. So the problem is that in certain situations there is an overarching "what did you want to get out of that person?". Don't be those people.
Strike up conversations because you enjoy people and their stories.