This is an excellent and inspiring post, but I'm worried people might try to use it as a model.
Neurotypical people think they can tell all sorts of things about someone's character from a short face-to-face meeting, but it turns out this is all noise; people's impressions of character obtained this way are not significantly more accurate than random chance.
Having said that, for all I know, Jessica may well be in the 0.1% of people who have extraordinary skill in this area, who really can accurately read character; if so, fair play to her, she has certainly made an immensely valuable contribution to Y Combinator.
The problem arises when other people try to emulate her and filter job applicants, business partners etc. by intuitive reading of character from a face-to-face meeting, because there is a 99.9% probability that you are not in that 0.1%. So you end up turning away good people because their hair was messy while simultaneously falling prey to glib sociopaths who know what buttons to press.
So by all means appreciate the post, and certainly appreciate Jessica herself if you have dealings with Y Combinator, but I would strongly advise against trying to copy the strategy of filtering people by intuitive reading.
Neurotypical people think they can tell all sorts of things about someone's character from a short face-to-face meeting, but it turns out this is all noise; people's impressions of character obtained this way are not significantly more accurate than random chance.
Having said that, for all I know, Jessica may well be in the 0.1% of people who have extraordinary skill in this area, who really can accurately read character; if so, fair play to her, she has certainly made an immensely valuable contribution to Y Combinator.
The problem arises when other people try to emulate her and filter job applicants, business partners etc. by intuitive reading of character from a face-to-face meeting, because there is a 99.9% probability that you are not in that 0.1%. So you end up turning away good people because their hair was messy while simultaneously falling prey to glib sociopaths who know what buttons to press.
So by all means appreciate the post, and certainly appreciate Jessica herself if you have dealings with Y Combinator, but I would strongly advise against trying to copy the strategy of filtering people by intuitive reading.