Humans already know what's good for them. Self-help books rarely contain new information. All they contain is motivation, depending on how well it's written. People could substitute it with chatGPT, but its unlikely to provide the same motivation. That's why you could ask chatGPT for the 10 most important lessons in the 4 day workweek, but that won't get you anywhere.
I've read a bunch of what could be considered "self help" and while they often have a lot of fluff, they do have interesting points. Many of them reference actual research studies to back those points.
I just skip the motivational fluff and dig out the useful bits. Makes them very fast reads when you can skip majority of it.
My recommendation is to find a talk by the author online. It’s free and serves the same purpose.
I disagree. There are a lot of counter intuitive things we’ve learned from psychology, and early childhood development. And I have learned some of them from books or in person training courses that made a difference.
Humans have know blocks for their own well being. Most struggle with probabilities or long term planning. But they are teachable skills.