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No, we're in agreement. I think where we differ is that I don't believe that not following advice makes it bad. Take your war example, if your advisor hands you a carefully crafted battle plan, it's your right to dismiss it or to go with your gut and improvise, but if you lose, you have no right to blame your defeat on your advisor's battle plan.
You'll have nothing to worry about here, as I don't participate in Wellness threads as a matter of principle. Though I must admit, torturing fellow Mottizens with good advice they just won't take has a certain appeal...
During the Vietnam War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara developed a strategy based on objective, quantitative measures such as body counts and kill ratios. The infamous Project 100,000 was based on the idea that a soldier was a soldier (compare, a calorie is a calorie) and that the Army could get the warm bodies it needed by recruiting literal retards.
America lost the war.
Sounds like they followed his advice, and it lead to failure, which is completely different from the failure mode of not following the advice.
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The Chinese and Mongols were in a semi eternal conflict. Every few hundred years the Mongols would ride in and conquer China. They'd then grow fat and content in China and then get conquered by the next set of mongol invaders.
An adviser proposes that the Mongols go back to living in the harsh Mongolian steps after conquering China. That way they will stay a hardy people and not be conquered by the next set of mongol invaders.
Everyone recognizes this is a good idea, but the whole reason the Mongols conquered China was for the loot and the prospect of not living in Mongolia.
The adviser dies in China reading reports of the next Mongolian horde gathering on the border.
If there was evidence that the idea would work, if carried out, it would still be a good idea. If the Chinese-Mongolians didn't want to do it because they got too comfy, and failed to come up with an alterntive approach, that's a perfectly valid decision, but they don't get to blame the advisor for coming up with a bad idea.
The likelihood of being carried out is part of being a good (or a bad) idea.
It might be part of being well suited for someone, but I don't think it has much impact on whether it's good in itself.
As categories are made for man, so is advice made for people. If an advisor insists on giving "good" advice despite knowing full well that his employer does not possess the capacity to follow it, he is a shitty advisor.
What do you mean by "capacity"? If you tell someone who doesn't have hands to do pull-ups, I'd probably agree. If the lack of "capacity" is just their decision to to follow the advice, then there's nothing wrong with the advice itself.
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