I understand your point. However, if someone who has smoked for 30 years and is dying of lung cancer advises you not to smoke do you dismiss them, call them a hypocrite, and then start smoking?

Maybe this is a separate the art from the artist argument.

Someone recently criticized me for liking an old 70s Cat Stevens song. They pointed out Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie

I not going to stop liking songs or movies or books simply because 20 years or more after they were created the artist gets canceled for saying or doing something stupid.

I like Walden and its message and just find it odd that people get in a fevered frenzy to call others a hypocrite.

I was just thinking about when people tell stories or you watch various Youtube videos...wasn't thinking about Science Fiction. Cool list of links! Thanks!

Yeah, anytime I hear people wanting to give up the art because of the artist I think you'd have to give up a lot of media and live a life without a lot of books, music, movies. Also, that's just the stuff we know about. And there's probably some evil person who had a hand in assembling my car but I'm not going to stop driving it because of that. I'm still going to rock to Led Zeppelin.

Reincarnation has conditions and constraints. I like it. And maybe once in a million years the soul is too close to a wormhole and gets sucked away to the opposite side of the universe.

but the way they got there is unobtainable for anyone hearing the advice

How is living on a little patch of land in a shack and growing beans unobtainable? It was the 1800s. Way too many people are hung up on the idea that he lived on a lot of land belonging to a friend. He could have gone off into the remote woods very easily. I don't see the big advantages or unobtainable nature in your argument.

It's not like he was a YouTuber living in a mansion that his dad bought and was trying to sell you his book on real estate investing.

There's nothing unobtainable about what he did or what he wrote about. Chris McCandless (though definitely controversial) went out and had his adventure in the 1990s and did so without money.

Thoreau living on Emerson's land was convenient but he didn't win the lottery and it's not unobtainable. There's a homeless guy living in a cave in Baker, CA right now. He walks to town about once a week. I suppose his life is easy and unobtainable because he's got a "free cave" on BLM land, right?

People are way too hung up on Thoreau's supposed advantages and they are exaggerating them as well.

Thanks! I'll check them out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence_(Delerium_song)

I think you have a reading comprehension problem. The smoking/cancer analogy was not a comparison. It was used to state that you should not dismiss good advice simply because you think someone is a hypocrite.

| exploiting and completely depending on others’ labour

Ralph Waldo Emerson was Thoreau's friend and he allowed him to stay on his land. How exactly is that exploitation? When your friend does you a favor or lends you something that in your mind is exploitation?

My guess is that you have never read "Walden" or "Civil Disobedience" or "Life Without Principle".