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Jessica Livingston (2015)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#131

Post by asveikau »

bolangi wrote: post #106
asveikau wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am extremely skeptical of someone who claims this ability in themselves or others. What this tells me is that someone is misjudging a lot of circumstances very confidently. You just can't understand people on a snap judgment, there are too many outliers. Imagine if we applied this kind of thinking in courts. We would convict a lot of innocent people. We wouldn't feel that we need to wait for all the facts and evide…

> I am extremely skeptical of someone who claims this ability in themselves or others. Have you never heard of someone being a good judge of character?

I've heard of many kinds of things. You've never heard of someone being wrong?

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#132

Post by leshow »

> The qualities of the founders are the best predictor of how a startup will do. And startups are in turn the most important source of growth in mature economies.

Ah yes, "growth" in our economy is all because of a select few of super special amazing people. It seems obvious to me this is a post facto rationalization.

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#133

Post by as_bntd »

asveikau wrote: post #97
mxstbr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people that can do this, that are "social radars." It's rare, but I've seen one and it's mindblowing to observe. 100% hit rate. (that doesn't mean we should do it in courts to convict people)

And I'm saying a 100% hit rate is not possible. Your ability to determine an accurate numerical hit rate is also very difficult to impossible. If we treat this kind of thing as an oracle rather than admit that it's a flawed heuristic, even a good heuristic being ultimately flawed, I think that's pretty dangerous. One has to be extremely humble at the task of evaluating people, because it's difficult and error-prone.

Well, it isn't possible because humans are not deterministic, but I imagine the manager in question could possibly have a high 'hit rate'.

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#134

Post by alexpotato »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #42
alexpotato wrote: post #37

One of the things she's best at is judging people. She's one of those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character. She can see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her nickname within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is A manager at a past job also had a similar "x-ray vision". During interviews, she would always sit in with another interviewer an…

Not to be argumentative, but how did someone get hired if 7 out of 8 interviewers said "pass"? What's the point of having 7 interviewers if only one of them gets to decide? Definitely agree with your point that some people have a gift for this kind of thing, so just genuinely curious how the 7 of 8 thing worked.

This happened after the manager already demonstrated a track record of 100% for picking candidates that turned out to be good. This happened in situations were the "hire" count was the majority.

I do also agree with you that "only one person gets to decide" is a bad idea in general (and is usually a red flag for someone trying to be a dictator).

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#135

Post by alexpotato »

p0pcult wrote: post #73
cutenewt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating story! Your x-ray vision manager: what (interview) questions or criteria did she use?

Not op, but >she would always sit in with another interviewer and never ask any questions of the candidates. She would just observe.

You are correct.

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#136

Post by alexpotato »

hgsgm wrote: post #76
p0pcult wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not op, but >she would always sit in with another interviewer and never ask any questions of the candidates. She would just observe.

Maybe the secret to being a good evaluator is to not do a distracting different task at the same time.

Chris Voss talks about this in his book "Never Split the Difference".

He advocates for teams of people handling a negotiation with the most experienced negotiator just observing.

The reason: it's incredibly difficult to be process, crafting and delivering responses in real time. If your primary goal is to observe the other side, that should be your sole focus. It's also incredibly valuable to have that observation hence why you should negotiate in teams (or at least pairs).

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#137

Post by alexpotato »

asveikau wrote: post #97
mxstbr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people that can do this, that are "social radars." It's rare, but I've seen one and it's mindblowing to observe. 100% hit rate. (that doesn't mean we should do it in courts to convict people)

And I'm saying a 100% hit rate is not possible. Your ability to determine an accurate numerical hit rate is also very difficult to impossible. If we treat this kind of thing as an oracle rather than admit that it's a flawed heuristic, even a good heuristic being ultimately flawed, I think that's pretty dangerous. One has to be extremely humble at the task of evaluating people, because it's difficult and error-prone.

You bring up a good point in that false negatives could never be tracked.

E.g. if the manager in this story said "no" and that person wasn't hired, how would you know she was correct?

I will say that there was a non-zero number of "she said 'no', person was hired anyway and it turned out to not be good". As sister/cousin threads have pointed out: this might be a self fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#138

Post by telltruth »

I wish pg the best but I think everyone should know how much legal liability these kind of public writings creates. A person I know closely had 25 year marriage in CA and he always believed in love and lifelong relationship. But as their kids went to college, wife's priorities changed. She started affair, started helping out her partner financially etc. Husband discovered all these accidently from her phone. After many discussions, they decided to file for divorce. She apparently claimed in court that she owned majority of his company even though she didn't played much of the part. The guy had started the company even before marriage by his own money. She produced bunch of emails among friend where he appreciated her for help. That was the end of it.

It's easy to swept away in "love" and all that but the reality is that 50% of marriages in Western world ends in divorce. Always remember that people change over time.

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#139

Post by smt88 »

telltruth wrote: post #138

I wish pg the best but I think everyone should know how much legal liability these kind of public writings creates. A person I know closely had 25 year marriage in CA and he always believed in love and lifelong relationship. But as their kids went to college, wife's priorities changed. She started affair, started helping out her partner financially etc. Husband discovered all these accidently from her phone. After ma…

Anyone this cynical about marriage just shouldn't get married.

Re: Jessica Livingston (2015)

#140

Post by neilv »

cm2012 wrote: post #127
neilv wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sensing (S) vs Intuiting (N). This is about how you process new information. S people see what's actually in front of them - they think and talk more in specifics. In general, S types are better at detail oriented work. What about someone who is strong intuitive, but starting the next moment they're very detail-oriented, and also the person you'd most trust for meticulous coding that had to work? > But I find these…

It's like being right or left handed. And you wouldn't want to box against George Foreman even if he uses his off hand. Intuitors just start with the big picture as their basic instinct, then fill in the details. Sensors start with detail and build up to the big picture.

Is that closer to the actual cognitive mechanics, or closer to a myth that's nevertheless useful for classifying people?

For example, in some empirical behavior research, person A seemed to have better snap decisions but poor at follow-though, and person B seemed to be asking about details... Has that nailed some key innate difference in how A and B actually think, or merely -- for purposes of, say, assigning military conscripts to jobs, or a huge corporate hiring machine that can't care beyond commodities -- at least it's a classification?

Maybe it's better than chance at predicting exhibited behavior (absent training), and we don't know that it reflects the actual cognitive mechanics?

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