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Major Investor Sues Theranos

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Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#181

Post by Shivetya »

djf1 wrote: post #132
36bydesign wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no photo is the way to go? Unless the article is about taking photos?

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. I just took issue with the suggestion that an unflattering picture somehow supports an article about shady business practices.

I don't see the unflattering aspect here, to we want her perfectly done up with makeup and hair? that too would insinuate a disconnect from common people. in the picture I saw my take away was she was trying to explain a situation and nicely at that.

is this all a male perception of a problem they fully do not understand and therefor think they know how its perceived by the opposite sex?

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#182

Post by conjectures »

camillomiller wrote: post #162
conjectures wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the way Holmes is perceived publicly ...which presumably is almost entirely based on what they read or see in the media?

Do you know any other way of forming a public opinion about someone you've never met and probably never will?

Nope, which is exactly why I expressed a high level of certainty in my earlier statement.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#184

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #160
onion2k wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investor's argument is that Theranos lied . The investor believes Theranos fraudulently produced evidence that their product worked in order to fake the responses to the investor's due diligence. If that's true, and the investor can prove it, then that's not simply part of the typical risk of investing, that makes the investor the victim of a serious crime.

That's a dumb argument then. See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies. That's why you go there in the first place, if you believe everything they tell you then you're going to get fleeced if they lie. Theranos did not comply with their duty to inform truthfully, but the investors did not comply with their duty to research. Asking the company is not research, the technology being complex…

[deleted]

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#185

Post by FussyZeus »

jacquesm wrote: post #160
onion2k wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investor's argument is that Theranos lied . The investor believes Theranos fraudulently produced evidence that their product worked in order to fake the responses to the investor's due diligence. If that's true, and the investor can prove it, then that's not simply part of the typical risk of investing, that makes the investor the victim of a serious crime.

That's a dumb argument then. See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies. That's why you go there in the first place, if you believe everything they tell you then you're going to get fleeced if they lie. Theranos did not comply with their duty to inform truthfully, but the investors did not comply with their duty to research. Asking the company is not research, the technology being complex…

> That's a dumb argument then. See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies.

I would agree that a certain amount of healthy...embellishment is to be expected from a company when talking to investors. Maybe I'm just naive since I don't play in the VC games, but if our first interaction as businesspeople is a lie, you aren't getting anything from me.

Bending the truth is one thing: evidence shows that Theranos at the direction of Holmes herself outright fabricated evidence to show their testing worked, knowing damn well it didn't.

I honestly don't understand what is taking so long. Everyone involved in this companies board should be behind bars for the remainder of their life. This wasn't some fucking ordering food app that went wrong, this was thousands of people's medical decisions. This shit matters but it gets the same kid gloves treatment that everyone worth more than a few million can count on from our pathetic justice system.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#186

Post by kbart »

jupiter90000 wrote: post #80

If one assumes Holmes didn't realize their product didn't work (questionable at best), imagine how it must be to work 7 days a week, forego friendships and intimate relationships, and not even watch TV, then after 12 years of that discover what you tried to make didn't/won't work. In too deep or something to just admit it's over and move on. Sounds like a very undesirable number of years with little positive to show,…

"Sounds like a very undesirable number of years with little positive to show"

Hm, I wouldn't call 4.5$ billion "little". I would gladly work 7 days a week for 12 years for even much lesser amount.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#187

Post by stonemetal »

djf1 wrote: post #132
36bydesign wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no photo is the way to go? Unless the article is about taking photos?

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. I just took issue with the suggestion that an unflattering picture somehow supports an article about shady business practices.

The exact same argument applies to any photo: If the news is based on facts, then the facts can speak for themselves. A photo does not support the article if the article is not related to how well the subject takes photos.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#189

Post by CarpetBench »

chrsstrm wrote: post #129
CarpetBench wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We didn't consider lying and cheating to be frowned upon until we decided we were a civilized society with rules based on Eh, what? Where are you getting that from? Any organism with cooperative dynamics also has to contend with cheaters, and yet cooperation is extremely prevalent in nature. There's a reason parasitism isn't considered the norm in the animal kingdom. I sincerely doubt that primitive human tribes wi…

> I sincerely doubt that primitive human tribes widely tolerated healthy adults who contributed absolutely nothing to the group. It's certainly not hard to imagine that no, they would not have tolerated such behavior. But does this mean that you are suggesting the members of this tribe convened and decided to put rules in place to define a member's behavior and potentially institute punishment if these rules were bro…

> But does this mean that you are suggesting the members of this tribe convened and decided to put rules in place to define a member's behavior and potentially institute punishment if these rules were broken?

No, although I could trivially say that any group of humans living together will be a society in some respect (and thus "natural" human behavior involves being in a society anyway).

Ignoring that, though, removing cheaters doesn't need to involve any sort of centralized group decision making. Your immune system doesn't convene and decide what kind of foreign bodies are unacceptable, and it's largely effective at what it does.

> ...does not disprove that cheating and lying are embedded instincts in living beings.

Sorry, the burden here is on you to prove that cheating and lying are embedded instincts (which I'm assuming means "typical in primitive humans" here). You're the one who made an affirmative statement.

My counterpoint is that cooperation is plentiful in nature (with many examples of cooperation in comparison to parasitism) and thus cheating is unlikely to be typical behavior in the wild.

You need to prove otherwise.

> Cheating and cooperation are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Are we defining cheating differently? What's your definition of cheating?

> The parent comment was suggesting that we are somehow evolving to lie and cheat and I'm suggesting that we have been more than capable of this behavior all along.

Humans are capable of any type of behavior. If your definition of "embedded behavior" is "humans are capable of doing that," then sure, it's trivially true because humans are numerous and any type of behavior can be found with such a large population.

> but we have actively suppressed these "survival skills" because they are deemed bad qualities.

Right, and my argument is that they're primarily suppressed because they're inferior survival skills in aggregate. Cheating and lying are classic "tragedy of the commons" behavior.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#190

Post by rsp1984 »

jacquesm wrote: post #160
onion2k wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investor's argument is that Theranos lied . The investor believes Theranos fraudulently produced evidence that their product worked in order to fake the responses to the investor's due diligence. If that's true, and the investor can prove it, then that's not simply part of the typical risk of investing, that makes the investor the victim of a serious crime.

That's a dumb argument then. See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies. That's why you go there in the first place, if you believe everything they tell you then you're going to get fleeced if they lie. Theranos did not comply with their duty to inform truthfully, but the investors did not comply with their duty to research. Asking the company is not research, the technology being complex…

See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies

Really? I'm not naive enough to believe that everything you get to hear during due dilligence is 100% truth but I also don't think we live in a world where everyone can get away with deception and lies. After all the civilized world has developed a constitutional state with a law that offers some level of protection.

So there is a point where business between a company and an investor is conducted in good faith. If it comes out later that the company has forged technological results to defraud investors, to me that's a very good reason to sue. Saying the investors didn't look well enough is futile as a) you could use the same argument to justify pretty much any case case of fraud and b) it's impossible to do perfect due dilligence.

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