Now that is a beautiful turn of phrase. Thank you!
I actually did come up with that on the spot, but I’m sure it’s too cute to be truly original. Not going to look for who said it first, though!
Well, it’s still a pretty astute summation of the phenomenon, and applicable to many situations. I may well use it again (so it’s good you’re disclaiming any copyright!).
NM need to check my facts first
As to @Dr.Strangelove’s assessment of the article, rather than just his cool turn of phrase, that’s it exactly.
In our modern world where satire needs to be prominently labeled to distinguish it from the insanity that passes for normal any more, this article is an example of something similar where the author leaves us guessing whether they believe Holmes’ garbage and the article is defense / hagiography / a sympathy piece, or they’re just letting her run so she can hang herself for all to see with her own mouth and no help from the author.
In that latter, it’s a bit like a famous politician. No matter how obviously awful and false something is, there’s somebody somewhere willing to lap it up as Righteous Truth. Many tens of millions of such somebodies actually.
When channeling a crazy person, authors nowadays really need to put a clear warning label on their piece:
CAUTION: Subject is Crazy
You can trust that I’m accurately passing along what they said. But don’t believe anything they said is actually real.
The need for such a warning label implies any fault of perception is with the reader. What I would say instead is that it is the author that has erred if they have so superficially described key traits of their subject as to fail to describe key attributes essential to the subject with the intended meaning (eg: Holmes = lying liar who lies) in the text itself. Good journalism doesn’t need warning labels like what you describe.
Many of us also do so because ethics and morals in a democratic society typically (but not invariably) are embodied in the criminal law, and we don’t want to go to prison. As Liz ‘n’ Sunny soon will be, and IMHO deservedly so.
Clearly, this wasn’t a disincentive to the Theranos scheme of deceptions, and Holmes didn’t think she would be subject to punitive consequences, which just speaks to the lack of rationality in whatever pathology describes her thoughts and behaviors. Sociopaths often believe that they won’t ever be caught, or if they are, that they can just talk their way out of trouble, and in fact this strategy worked for Holmes long after people should have been cognizant of the failings of the purported Theranos blood testing technology.
Stranger
Well, I did say “Many of us.” She is pretty clearly not one of us, at least as far as that goes.
There is also doing, or refraining from doing, something because it is simply the right thing to do (without getting into the philosophy of how we might define that), even if one derives no personal benefit from it, even the appearance of doing good, and in fact it may be deleterious to one’s career or have other consequences. But that is merely rational behavior in an appropriately defined sense. For instance, it is rational to want a world in which people do not defraud the medical community so it follows that it is never acceptable to do so yourself.
That run of logic only works if you’re not a psychopath. The wire missing in those folks makes the logic run more like:
it is rational to want a world in which people do not defraud the medical community because that will leave more for me to defraud from them.
IOW, their thought process amounts to:
The rest of humanity is a faceless undifferentiated horde of useless drones who, to the degree I think of them at all, I want them to behave only in the manner that most benefits me. And I want my behavior to be whatever most benefits me. No other considerations enter into it.
It’s the reflexivity, the awareness that you are one of the horde and the horde is composed of people just like you who are each of no lesser nor greater priority than you are that is simply lacking.
2 separate rulings went against her today. No, she can’t stay out of prison during her appeal, and she owes more than 450 million in restitution.
Nvm……
So presumably her next ploy will be to get pregnant again?
Yes, and she should get blood lab work done during pregnancy. I wonder what lab she will use.
After having had one kid named Invicta (Latin for Invincible), her next one will be named “Sursum Vestri Iudex” (Up yours, judge).
Or there could be a very important wedding in Cuba or other nation without an extradition treaty with the U.S., that she absolutely must attend.
She has requested May 30th as the day to start her sentence
Oh. My. God. Give. Me. A. Flipping. Break.
The judge has granted her request. Reports are that she will serve her sentence in Texas.
It’s actually a reasonable accommodation IMHO. For anyone other than Elizabeth Holmes, who I just plain don’t like 
.
But removing my very subjective feelings about her from the equation and, eh, I can’t get that up in arms about this. Unless she manages to flee to Cuba on May 29th with twenty million in smuggled diamonds. THEN I’ll be annoyed.