Yeah I remember watching this YouTube video about Puyi and thinking, huh, we do have a real historical example of Ajeya Cotra’s young businessperson analogy from Holden’s blog awhile back:
Imagine you are an eight-year-old whose parents left you a $1 trillion company and no trusted adult to serve as your guide to the world. You must hire a smart adult to run your company as CEO, handle your life the way that a parent would (e.g. decide your school, where you’ll live, when you need to go to the dentist), and administer your vast wealth (e.g. decide where you’ll invest your money).
You have to hire these grownups based on a work trial or interview you come up with—you don’t get to see any resumes, don’t get to do reference checks, etc. Because you’re so rich, tons of people apply for all sorts of reasons.
Your candidate pool includes:
Saints—people who genuinely just want to help you manage your estate well and look out for your long-term interests.
Sycophants—people who just want to do whatever it takes to make you short-term happy or satisfy the letter of your instructions regardless of long-term consequences.
Schemers—people with their own agendas who want to get access to your company and all its wealth and power so they can use it however they want.
Because you’re eight, you’ll probably be terrible at designing the right kind of work tests… Whatever you could easily come up with seems like it could easily end up with you hiring, and giving all functional control to, a Sycophant or a Schemer. By the time you’re an adult and realize your error, there’s a good chance you’re penniless and powerless to reverse that.
Yeah I remember watching this YouTube video about Puyi and thinking, huh, we do have a real historical example of Ajeya Cotra’s young businessperson analogy from Holden’s blog awhile back: