I think you&#x27;re right, but I think it&#x27;s not as big a deal as you might think.  It all comes down to social acceptability.<p>Socially acceptable metrics like &quot;Character&quot; and &quot;social cues&quot; and &quot;goodness&quot; can be reliably received in terms more like &quot;Thinks like me,&quot; &quot;probably won&#x27;t hurt me,&quot; &quot;makes me feel good.&quot;<p>But why shouldn&#x27;t those things be evaluated?  If you&#x27;re going to build a strong sense of team, you might need to risk rejecting people for completely unfair social reasons, up to and including a basic sense that someone&#x27;s just &#x27;uncool&#x27;!<p>It doesn&#x27;t require Jessica to be a magic oracle for her to be the one that voices discomforts or phrases them in a socially palatable way.  Technical evaluators might not be comfortable saying &quot;this person just had a bad vibe,&quot; but if someone can point out a socially acceptable reason for the vibe-- &quot;seemed more concerned about money than the idea,&quot; for instance--the vibe can be acted upon with no loss of face for the technical evaluator.<p>Given that some of these subjective feelings can be valid warning signals for the worst kind of behavior, it&#x27;s hard to be upset if the &#x27;social radar&#x27; enables the rejection of otherwise good and competent people that just rubbed the group the wrong way.  So the argument goes: those people will still, by their merit, go on to find success.<p>I think it&#x27;s hard to argue that Jessica and Paul haven&#x27;t enjoyed their position as arbiters of their special club.  I couldn&#x27;t find it, but there&#x27;s an article somewhere about the funding of Reddit where Jessica&#x27;s patronization of the Reddit &#x27;boys&#x27; gives me this sickly feeling.<p>I think it was uncouth for Jessica to write about her radar so openly.  But I&#x27;m not particularly upset that it was being relied upon.<p>(Now, if it were me, I&#x27;d feel real gross building a family around the fact that people are auditioning to have some of my money to borrow.  But that&#x27;s just me.)