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What is advice for? Should it reassure us, or shake us up? Should it encourage us to compare ourselves to the advice giver or to the rest of humanity? And can it really help us?

A wave of new advice, and advice on advice, invites us to consider such questions. One example is “Dear Mona,” a new column by Mona Chalabi at the data-journalism website FiveThirtyEight. In the introduction to her inaugural column, Ms. Chalabi takes a swipe at other advice columnists: “I’m not a fan of advice columns in which the writer dispenses ‘you shoulds’ based on her experience. Instead, I’ll offer data to contextualize your experience.” That is, she hopes to help readers answer the question “Am I normal?”

She goes on to consider the case of Micah Cohen, her editor at FiveThirtyEight, who is 32 but lives with a roommate. After examining demographic data and speaking with a sociologist, Ms. Chalabi concludes:

“It turns out that living alone at your age is a rarity in America. But taking into account your gender, where you live and your education level, it seems you’re … well, you’re still not normal, but you are a little less abnormal.”

She signs off, “Hope the numbers help.” Ester Bloom at The Nation, however, finds her advice unhelpful. She writes that statistics are a poor basis for advice:

“Living by the numbers is a daunting, if not impossible, task. Just because most people do it doesn’t mean you should. What is good counsel across the board can make no sense for a particular individual, because an abundance of data does not make for better personal decisions. Going into engineering or another STEM field might make sense for the average student based on the numbers; that is not terribly relevant information, however, for a graphic design major who detests math. Nor is it terribly relevant that living alone is abnormal for a thirtysomething if the right romantic partner, or roommate, hasn’t appeared.”

And she argues that the best advice columnists are those who “know to dig deeper,” who can see the question behind the question. She cites Carolyn Hax and Cheryl Strayed.

At The Cut, Ann Friedman delves more deeply into Ms. Strayed’s appeal (Emily Douglas, a senior editor at The Nation, flagged the connection between her piece and Ms. Bloom’s on Twitter). She notes that Ms. Strayed’s “Dear Sugar” column, and her book of collected advice, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” have built a devoted fan base, especially (though not exclusively) among women. And she sums up the column’s ethos:

“Her voice is both compassionate and authoritative, exactly the tone we hope to strike when our friends ask us how they should get over that guy or deal with their mom’s drama. Sugar doesn’t just provide an answer, she provides a model.”

In a 2011 “Dear Sugar” column, Ms. Strayed responded to five letters — four from women who were considering leaving their partners, and one from a woman who had been left — with a story about the breakup of her own marriage:

“There was in me an awful thing, from almost the very beginning: a tiny clear voice that would not, no matter what I did, stop saying go.

“Go, even though you love him.

“Go, even though he’s kind and faithful and dear to you.

“Go, even though he’s your best friend and you’re his.”

She finished:

“Go, because you want to.

“Because wanting to leave is enough.

“Get a pen. Write that last sentence on your palm, sweet peas — all five of you. Then read it over and over again until your tears have washed it away.”

This is as clear example as any of the kind of advice Ms. Chalabi calls out — the writer dispensing “you shoulds” based on her experience — but for Ms. Friedman and the women she talked to, it’s revelatory.

Ms. Strayed hasn’t written a “Dear Sugar” column since 2012, though an animated film may be in the works. In the meantime, the clearest heir to her brand of advice is Heather Havrilesky, who writes “Ask Polly” at The Awl. Like Ms. Strayed, Ms. Havrilesky tends toward long, personal replies. She also often addresses not just one specific problem but the advice-seeker’s entire mental state. In turn, readers seem to know they can come to her not just with questions about their bad roommates or mean mother-in-law but with their whole sprawling lives. This week’s letter writer, after discussing her lack of focus, her fears about her marriage and her tendency to compare herself to other people, says:

“I need someone to tell me what to DO, not to just listen to me whine all the time. Can you give me some insight? I feel like I will be this way forever!”

Ms. Havrilesky does give her some concrete suggestions (try meditation; talk to your husband), but she also offers a more complex and abstract prescription that ends thus:

“Stop repeating that same old story, and look around you. You are already free. This moment, in your messy apartment, in the heat, among your half-finished paintings, in the unnerving dusk, with the accumulated disappointments of years and years and years, puddling around you? This moment is yours, and it’s pure and miraculous and sad and sweet. Swim, slowly, calmly, through this sad, sweet moment, through this sad, sweet infinity. You are already free.”

It’s an answer but it’s also its own mini-philosophy, a discussion of anxiety and acceptance and life that’s applicable far outside one woman’s particular situation. Maybe that’s what seekers of advice — or at least readers of advice columns — are searching for, whether we find it in data or in personal anecdote. Maybe we want an answer not just to the question at hand but to a larger, more primal one: “Can you give me some insight? I feel like I will be this way forever!”