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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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I asked how so
The answer to that question fills a bookshelf. Jerry Weinberg's Secrets of Consulting could be a good start. Another would be Edward Deci's Why We Do What We Do.
And you're assuming that "convincing" is going to be an effective strategy here. I'm not so sure.
Even with the "worst" motivation, why couldn't OP apply the "best" strategy towards helping?
Which strategy is "best"? How would you know?
And, once again for you and everyone in the back, I'm not trying to grade OP's motivation. Motivations are motivations. I'm not interested in good or bad, but rather more or less likely to actually help.
Just use your interpretation of best when you said "better" advice in your original comment. Seems like the metric towards "best" is "more likely to actually help".
Also, you can give a few example of motivations that would end up with the strategies most likely to actually work. Maybe OP didn't think of these motivations themselves, but they would adopt when you state them out loud for us.
But coming back to my main point, I still don't see how the motivation could dictate strategies most likely to help.
Let me see whether I understand.
I could make a handful of guesses about OP and their situation, and then use those guesses to write hundreds or even thousands of words, some of which might help and many of which wouldn't. On the contrary, some of them could be downright damaging, depending on a bunch of factors I don't know about OP, their relative, and the relationship between them.
Or I could ask some questions and wait for the answers, then narrow my suggestions to those that, given that additional context, are more likely to help.
I'm trying to help one person, not write a chapter of a book.
As for this:
You said that. I told you that the answer fills a bookshelf. I suggested two books to start. I totally understand if you don't care enough about the answer to read a book. I guess you could ask an LLM to summarize one of those books for you, in case that would be more palatable to you.
And yes, I know that this sounds evasive. I genuinely don't mean it that way. I don't have a 50-word answer for you that distills decades of research into why people choose to do what they do, such as OP's relative choosing not to learn to read. They might not understand it at all themself.
It's fine with me if we disagree on this point. Indeed, I have no interest in trying to convince you. I'd like to help OP and I'm not much concerned about justifying my methods to you. If you're actually interested, read the Deci book. I really liked it.
Peace.