Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tyler and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham sat down at his home in the English countryside to discuss what areas of talent judgment his co-founder and wife Jessica Livingston is better at, whether young founders have gotten rarer, whether he still takes a dim view of solo founders, how to 2x ambition in the developed world, on the minute past which a Y Combinator interviewer is unlikely to change their mind, what YC learned after rejecting companies, how he got over his fear of flying, Florentine history, why almost all good artists are underrated, what's gone wrong in art, why new homes and neighborhoods are ugly, why he wants to visit the Dark Ages, why he's optimistic about Britain and San Fransisco, the challenges of regulating AI, whether we're underinvesting in high-cost interruption activities, walking, soundproofing, fame, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded July 15th, 2023.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:09.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems.
0:13.6	Learn more at mercatis.org.
0:16.4	For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit Conversationswithtiler.com.
0:26.5	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
0:29.9	Today I'm here with Paul Graham. Paul, welcome.
0:32.6	Thank you.
0:33.8	You've written several times that your wife, Jessica Livingstone, is a better judge of character than you are.
0:40.0	What other areas of talent judgment is she better or much better than you?
0:44.5	Practically everything to do with people.
0:46.9	She's a real expert on people, and like social protocol, what to wear at events, what to say to someone,
0:53.4	anything like that.
0:55.6	But you have all this data, so why can't you learn from the data and from her to do as well as she can?
1:00.8	What's the binding and strain here in limiting someone as a judge of human affairs?
1:05.8	Partly, I just don't have as much natural ability, and partly I just don't care as much about these things.
1:11.7	Where the conversations we have are not, Paul, you can't wear that.
1:15.9	They're like, Paul, you can't wear that.
1:18.2	And I'm like, really? Why not? What's wrong with this? I just don't care as much.
1:22.7	But say when you're judging talent, Sam Altman, Patrick Hollis, and you're judging people.
1:26.2	Of course, it's the business plan, but much of it is the talent.
1:29.5	Oh, it's all the people.
1:30.9	The earlier you're judging startups, the more you're just judging the founders.
	...

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