Hacker News Reader

On one hand, PG wants people who beat the system. On the other hand, someone told me PG is high on ethics. These seem to contradict one another.

They don't when the system is evil.

View on HN

One of my examples: I was working on a political campaign for federal office. The party had promised our candidate significant financial backing, it didn't come through they just wanted a candidate in the race. We realized that we were never going to be able to compete financially against an incumbent candidate with a war chest of special interest money.

The hack I came up with was that we would announce that we weren't going to accept and money from lobbyists, PACs, or anyone outside the state. Not that we were going to get much anyways ;)

We still got stomped. But it was great ammunition in our message toolbox and we used it all of the time.

Thats what I call message hacking.

Evil is relative. Thats a whole other discussion about culture, moral imperatives, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com