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0 pointscperciva10y ago0 comments

He tried to stack the deck by asking his 30,000 twitter followers to vote for him. He got caught. YC decided to be generous and interview him rather than disqualifying him completely. After the interview, YC decided not to invest in his company.

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6 comments · 1 top-level

lemming10y ago· 5 in thread

Just to be clear, your opinion is that Maciej deliberately and knowingly cheated?

cpercivaOP10y ago

My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.

lemming10y ago

You didn't actually answer my question.

When you use a lot of phrases like: "Maciej cheated", "Maciej tried to game the system", "He tried to stack the deck", you don't make it sound like you think he accidentally took cold medicine - you're directly attributing malice to him.

cpercivaOP10y ago

He deliberately took a drug which he knew would improve his athletic performance. He may or may not have known that it was on the banned drugs list.

tanderson9210y ago

Nitpicking here: I don't think Silken Laumann lost any Olympic medals, only Pan Am medals if I remember correctly. Not that it makes any difference whatsoever to your point.

cpercivaOP10y ago

Huh, you're quite right. I guess I mentally conflated "Olympic athlete" and "lost medals" into "lost Olympic medals".

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