最近我一直在思考，俗話說無奸不商，可為什么現在成功者中少有卑鄙的呢？當然也有例外，但是非常少。

卑鄙的人可不是少數。實際上，是互聯網讓我們了解到一個人能夠卑鄙到什么程度。過去只有名人和專家才能掌握輿論，現在互聯網給了每個人傳播的渠道，我們這才能看到那些過去被隱藏在長尾中的卑劣的人和事。

盡管卑鄙的人很多，但是成功者里鮮有存在，難道說，卑鄙和成功是互斥的嗎？

我的這種判斷，或許因為我視角的偏差。因為我只認識創業者、程序員、教授這些類型的人。我倒挺相信其他領域的成功者是手段卑鄙的，比如我總覺得那些對沖基金經理肯定是奸詐狡猾的，但我不了解這個領域，所以無法做出判斷。又比如，那些大毒梟給人感覺都是手段極其殘忍的。但是最少世界上還有很大一部分凈土，在那里，卑鄙的人不會成功，而且這部分領土正在擴大。

我妻子，同時也是 YC 的創始人 Jessica，她有著能像 X 光掃描一樣洞察他人品行的特異功能，娶她回家就像娶了一臺機場的安檢儀一樣。她從投資銀行進入到創業領域，一路走來她也同樣注意到這樣一個現象，那就是：

品行好的創業者總是能取得成功，而人品卑劣的人創業總是失敗。

這是為何呢？我覺得有以下幾個原因。第一，卑鄙的行為讓你變得愚蠢。這是我痛恨競爭的原因。在競爭中，你沒辦法發揮到最好。因為競爭不具有一般性，在競爭中獲勝，需要考慮天時地利，還有人為的因素。取得勝利往往不是通過更好的去思考，而是通過一些在某些特定情形適用的伎倆。競爭和解決真實問題同樣費腦子，對于那些珍惜自己腦細胞的人來說，這是一件非常痛苦的事情，就好像汽車輪子一直打滑，你的大腦飛速運轉著但是卻什么實質性工作都沒做。

創業公司不是通過攻擊對手來獲勝的，他們取勝的方式是超越對手。當然也有例外，但通常創業者成功的方式是跑在前頭，而不是停下來和對手干架。

耍手段的創業者會失敗的另一個原因，是他們招不到最優秀的人為他們工作。確實有人能夠忍受和他們一起工作，因為他們確實需要一份工作。但是最優秀的人會有其他的選擇。一個卑鄙的人無法說服最好的人才為他工作，除非這人非常善于游說。而團隊成員的質量對創業公司又至關重要。

第三個原因，仁愛的精神同時也是他們前進的輔動力。如果你想做偉大的事情，驅動你的通常是一種仁義的精神。

最富有的創業者他們最想要的不是錢，被金錢驅使的創業者通常會在面臨高價收購時，選擇把公司賣掉。那些還繼續堅持的創業者，他們內心有著比金錢更高的向往。

雖然他們可能不會經常掛在嘴邊，但是他們一直在努力改善這個世界。這意味著仁義的內心是一種天然的優勢。

更讓人激動的是，人品和成功掛鉤的游戲規則，不是僅僅適用在創業領域，一個嶄新的未來正在到來。

歷史中，大部分的成功意味著掌控稀缺資源，獲得它需要經過激烈的爭奪。游牧民族通過侵略把食物采集者趕往貧瘠的土地，鍍金時代的金融家通過激烈角逐來實現鐵路壟斷。過去，要想成功，就得贏得零和博弈（zero-sum games），把別人的搶過來，變成自己的。這種情況下，卑鄙不僅不是成功的障礙，反而成為了一種優勢。

但是現在時代變了，沒有你死我活，獲得成功也不再是通過搶奪稀缺資源，而是通過創新和創造。

事實上，創新驅動成功的游戲規則早就存在了。在公元前三世紀，阿基米德的成功法則就是通過不斷的創新，至少在他被闖進來的羅馬士兵殺死之前。這也說明，以創新為驅動力的社會生存法則，需要社會秩序達到了一定的高度。這不僅僅是說沒有戰爭而已，還包括避免 19 世紀的巨頭之間的經濟暴力，要能夠營造出一種安全感，我的創新不會被隨意竊取。

創造力在過去一直是思想家們的生存法則，他們是在浪潮之巔的人。你如果回想一下歷史上那些不是依靠殘忍手段獲取成功的人，你首先會想到數學家，作者和藝術家。現在，知識分子的游戲規則已經開始滲透到了更廣大的真實世界中，正在逐漸扭轉過去成功和道德的歷史性對立關系。這是多么振奮人心的時代！

我和夫人一直教育我們的孩子要做一個好人，我們可以忍受著噪音，擁擠，垃圾食品，但是我們不能忍受卑劣的人品。現在我教育孩子的時候又多了一套說詞：卑鄙的人不會成功!

Paul Graham & Jassica Livingston

原文：Mean People Fail

－November 2014

It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few.

Meanness isn't rare. In fact, one of the things the internet has shown us is how mean people can be. A few decades ago, only famous people and professional writers got to publish their opinions. Now everyone can, and we can all see the long tail of meanness that had previously been hidden.

And yet while there are clearly a lot of mean people out there, there are next to none among the most successful people I know. What's going on here? Are meanness and success inversely correlated?

Part of what's going on, of course, is selection bias. I only know people who work in certain fields: startup founders, programmers, professors. I'm willing to believe that successful people in other fields are mean. Maybe successful hedge fund managers are mean; I don't know enough to say. It seems quite likely that most successful drug lords are mean. But there are at least big chunks of the world that mean people don't rule, and that territory seems to be growing.

My wife and Y Combinator cofounder Jessica is one of those rare people who have x-ray vision for character. Being married to her is like standing next to an airport baggage scanner. She came to the startup world from investment banking, she has always been struck both by how consistently successful startup founders turn out to be good people, and how consistently bad people fail as startup founders.

Why? I think there are several reasons. One is that being mean makes you stupid. That's why I hate fights. You never do your best work in a fight, because fights are not sufficiently general. Winning is always a function of the situation and the people involved. You don't win fights by thinking of big ideas but by thinking of tricks that work in one particular case. And yet fighting is just as much work as thinking about real problems. Which is particularly painful to someone who cares how their brain is used: your brain goes fast but you get nowhere, like a car spinning its wheels.

Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race ahead, not to stop and fight.

Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options. A mean person can't convince the best people to work for him unless he is super convincing. And while having the best people helps any organization, it's critical for startups.

There is also a complementary force at work: if you want to build great things, it helps to be driven by a spirit of benevolence. The startup founders who end up richest are not the ones driven by money. The ones driven by money take the big acquisition offer that nearly every successful startup gets en route. The ones who keep going are driven by something else. They may not say so explicitly, but they're usually trying to improve the world. Which means people with a desire to improve the world have a natural advantage.

The exciting thing is that startups are not just one random type of work in which meanness and success are inversely correlated. This kind of work is the future.

For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. One got that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoral nomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, or metaphorically in the case of Gilded Age financiers contending with one another to assemble railroad monopolies. For most of history, success meant success at zero-sum games. And in most of them meanness was not a handicap but probably an advantage.

That is changing. Increasingly the games that matter are not zero-sum. Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things.

There have long been games where you won by having new ideas. In the third century BC Archimedes won by doing that. At least until an invading Roman army killed him. Which illustrates why this change is happening: for new ideas to matter, you need a certain degree of civil order. And not just not being at war. You also need to prevent the sort of economic violence that nineteenth century magnates practiced against one another and communist countries practiced against their citizens. People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen.

That has always been the case for thinkers, which is why this trend began with them. When you think of successful people from history who weren't ruthless, you get mathematicians and writers and artists. The exciting thing is that their m.o. seems to be spreading. The games played by intellectuals are leaking into the real world, and this is reversing the historical polarity of the relationship between meanness and success.

So I'm really glad I stopped to think about this. Jessica and I have always worked hard to teach our kids not to be mean. We tolerate noise and mess and junk food, but not meanness. And now I have both an additional reason to crack down on it, and an additional argument to use when I do: that being mean makes you fail.

－ 本文來自Paul Graham博客，譯文來自36Kr

感謝pmcaff智囊團預備群成員 陸偉 推薦

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