Context: Post #10 in my sequence of private Lightcone Infrastructure memos edited for public consumption.

This one, more so than any other one in this sequence, is something I do not think is good advice for everyone, and I do not expect to generalize that well to broader populations. If I had been writing this with the broader LessWrong audience in mind I would have written something pretty different, but I feel like for the sake of transparency I should include all the memos on Lightcone principles I have written, and this one in particular would feel like a bad one to omit.

In "What We Look for in Founders" Paul Graham says:

4. Naughtiness

Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter.

The world is full of bad rules, and full of people trying to enforce them. Not only that, it's commonplace to combine [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wGa5gd49225GufcFi/be-naughty

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.