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https://paulgraham.com/founders.html https://paulgraham.com/founders.html > 4. Naughtiness > Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they

https://paulgraham.com/founders.html https://paulgraham.com/founders.html > 4. Naughtiness > Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination. > Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications.

hotpotamus 3y ago
Interestingly you've left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether you view these immigrants as morally upright while being somewhat naughty. You could certainly say that they've found an exploit/hack in the system by claiming asylum and could view that as clever and/or immoral depending on the eye of the beholder. I will say that I don't think the situation is being handled all that well (and I suppose hasn't for decades, but perhaps that just goes to show that there's not much we can do at all), but as a resident of South Texas, I haven't felt any actual problems with my day-to-day life that I can directly attribute to illegal immigration.
- 462436347 3y ago
  > Interestingly you've left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether you view these immigrants as morally upright while being somewhat naughty. I thought my post was unambiguous. Powerful, successful people (like pg and sama) clearly don't believe the rules apply to them.

hotpotamus 3y ago

Interestingly you've left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether you view these immigrants as morally upright while being somewhat naughty. You could certainly say that they've found an exploit/hack in the system by claiming asylum and could view that as clever and/or immoral depending on the eye of the beholder. I will say that I don't think the situation is being handled all that well (and I suppose hasn't for decades, but perhaps that just goes to show that there's not much we can do at all), but as a resident of South Texas, I haven't felt any actual problems with my day-to-day life that I can directly attribute to illegal immigration.

462436347 3y ago
> Interestingly you've left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether you view these immigrants as morally upright while being somewhat naughty. I thought my post was unambiguous. Powerful, successful people (like pg and sama) clearly don't believe the rules apply to them.