最近我一直在思考，俗話說(shuō)無(wú)奸不商，可為什么現(xiàn)在成功者中少有卑鄙的呢？當(dāng)然也有例外，但是非常少。

卑鄙的人可不是少數(shù)。實(shí)際上，是互聯(lián)網(wǎng)讓我們了解到一個(gè)人能夠卑鄙到什么程度。過(guò)去只有名人和專(zhuān)家才能掌握輿論，現(xiàn)在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)給了每個(gè)人傳播的渠道，我們這才能看到那些過(guò)去被隱藏在長(zhǎng)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(shuō)，卑鄙和成功是互斥的嗎？

我的這種判斷，或許因?yàn)槲乙暯堑钠睢Ｒ驗(yàn)槲抑徽J(rèn)識(shí)創(chuàng)業(yè)者、程序員、教授這些類(lèi)型的人。我倒挺相信其他領(lǐng)域的成功者是手段卑鄙的，比如我總覺(jué)得那些對(duì)沖基金經(jīng)理肯定是奸詐狡猾的，但我不了解這個(gè)領(lǐng)域，所以無(wú)法做出判斷。又比如，那些大毒梟給人感覺(jué)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(huì)成功，而且這部分領(lǐng)土正在擴(kuò)大。

我妻子，同時(shí)也是 YC 的創(chuàng)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(tái)機(jī)場(chǎng)的安檢儀一樣。她從投資銀行進(jìn)入到創(chuàng)業(yè)領(lǐng)域，一路走來(lái)她也同樣注意到這樣一個(gè)現(xiàn)象，那就是：

品行好的創(chuàng)業(yè)者總是能取得成功，而人品卑劣的人創(chuàng)業(yè)總是失敗。

這是為何呢？我覺(jué)得有以下幾個(gè)原因。第一，卑鄙的行為讓你變得愚蠢。這是我痛恨競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的原因。在競(jìng)爭(zhēng)中，你沒(méi)辦法發(fā)揮到最好。因?yàn)楦?jìng)爭(zhēng)不具有一般性，在競(jìng)爭(zhēng)中獲勝，需要考慮天時(shí)地利，還有人為的因素。取得勝利往往不是通過(guò)更好的去思考，而是通過(guò)一些在某些特定情形適用的伎倆。競(jìng)爭(zhēng)和解決真實(shí)問(wèn)題同樣費(fèi)腦子，對(duì)于那些珍惜自己腦細(xì)胞的人來(lái)說(shuō)，這是一件非常痛苦的事情，就好像汽車(chē)輪子一直打滑，你的大腦飛速運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)著但是卻什么實(shí)質(zhì)性工作都沒(méi)做。

創(chuàng)業(yè)公司不是通過(guò)攻擊對(duì)手來(lái)獲勝的，他們?nèi)俚姆绞绞浅綄?duì)手。當(dāng)然也有例外，但通常創(chuàng)業(yè)者成功的方式是跑在前頭，而不是停下來(lái)和對(duì)手干架。

耍手段的創(chuàng)業(yè)者會(huì)失敗的另一個(gè)原因，是他們招不到最優(yōu)秀的人為他們工作。確實(shí)有人能夠忍受和他們一起工作，因?yàn)樗麄兇_實(shí)需要一份工作。但是最優(yōu)秀的人會(huì)有其他的選擇。一個(gè)卑鄙的人無(wú)法說(shuō)服最好的人才為他工作，除非這人非常善于游說(shuō)。而團(tuán)隊(duì)成員的質(zhì)量對(duì)創(chuàng)業(yè)公司又至關(guān)重要。

第三個(gè)原因，仁愛(ài)的精神同時(shí)也是他們前進(jìn)的輔動(dòng)力。如果你想做偉大的事情，驅(qū)動(dòng)你的通常是一種仁義的精神。

最富有的創(chuàng)業(yè)者他們最想要的不是錢(qián)，被金錢(qián)驅(qū)使的創(chuàng)業(yè)者通常會(huì)在面臨高價(jià)收購(gòu)時(shí)，選擇把公司賣(mài)掉。那些還繼續(xù)堅(jiān)持的創(chuàng)業(yè)者，他們內(nèi)心有著比金錢(qián)更高的向往。

雖然他們可能不會(huì)經(jīng)常掛在嘴邊，但是他們一直在努力改善這個(gè)世界。這意味著仁義的內(nèi)心是一種天然的優(yōu)勢(shì)。

更讓人激動(dòng)的是，人品和成功掛鉤的游戲規(guī)則，不是僅僅適用在創(chuàng)業(yè)領(lǐng)域，一個(gè)嶄新的未來(lái)正在到來(lái)。

歷史中，大部分的成功意味著掌控稀缺資源，獲得它需要經(jīng)過(guò)激烈的爭(zhēng)奪。游牧民族通過(guò)侵略把食物采集者趕往貧瘠的土地，鍍金時(shí)代的金融家通過(guò)激烈角逐來(lái)實(shí)現(xiàn)鐵路壟斷。過(guò)去，要想成功，就得贏得零和博弈（zero-sum games），把別人的搶過(guò)來(lái)，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(yōu)勢(shì)。

但是現(xiàn)在時(shí)代變了，沒(méi)有你死我活，獲得成功也不再是通過(guò)搶奪稀缺資源，而是通過(guò)創(chuàng)新和創(chuàng)造。

事實(shí)上，創(chuàng)新驅(qū)動(dòng)成功的游戲規(guī)則早就存在了。在公元前三世紀(jì)，阿基米德的成功法則就是通過(guò)不斷的創(chuàng)新，至少在他被闖進(jìn)來(lái)的羅馬士兵殺死之前。這也說(shuō)明，以創(chuàng)新為驅(qū)動(dòng)力的社會(huì)生存法則，需要社會(huì)秩序達(dá)到了一定的高度。這不僅僅是說(shuō)沒(méi)有戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)而已，還包括避免 19 世紀(jì)的巨頭之間的經(jīng)濟(jì)暴力，要能夠營(yíng)造出一種安全感，我的創(chuàng)新不會(huì)被隨意竊取。

創(chuàng)造力在過(guò)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(huì)想到數(shù)學(xué)家，作者和藝術(shù)家。現(xiàn)在，知識(shí)分子的游戲規(guī)則已經(jīng)開(kāi)始滲透到了更廣大的真實(shí)世界中，正在逐漸扭轉(zhuǎn)過(guò)去成功和道德的歷史性對(duì)立關(guān)系。這是多么振奮人心的時(shí)代！

我和夫人一直教育我們的孩子要做一個(gè)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(xiàn)在我教育孩子的時(shí)候又多了一套說(shuō)詞：卑鄙的人不會(huì)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(lái)自Paul Graham博客，譯文來(lái)自36Kr

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