Companies are this way too. The best companies are all run by OKRs and metrics. But if you peek under the hood, all of it is insanely hackable; you have to be naive to try and actually meet your explicitly stated objectives because that's not how you get promoted.

It reminds me of a quote from The Elephant in the Brain. I don't remember the wording exactly, but it's something like "if there is a behavior in a large group of people that doesn't make sense to you, not only is it by design, but it's also probably the whole point."

Incidentally, I was also struck by how much of YC was (in 2009) about hacking venture capital. But lots of people from that era now say this behavior is unethical disavow all knowledge that it was ever actively promoted. It's like we lived through different realities.

If I were to steelman The Lesson to Unlearn I think I'd say this. On an individual level there is enormous benefit to learning how to operate without hacking a test. That's how you do great work; that's what original thinking is. On a societal level this seems unshakable. But societies have made dramatic shifts in behavior and social organization before. From hunter gatherers to farmers to city dwellers, for example. So while this is hard to imagine it might just be that-- lack of imagination. The social return to abandoning this system might indeed be enormous.