Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 315 posts

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#301

Post by everforward »

causi wrote: post #32
IIAOPSW wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but Holmes didn't steal $5k more than three times. She stole millions of dollars but only did it once. So your statute doesn't apply.

I'm flatly amazed they couldn't prove anybody died as a result of her deliberate greed-fueled negligence in providing fake medical test results. She should be charged with manslaughter.

I think this is harder to prove than you'd think. You can't just prove that Theranos did a blood test and someone died, you'd have to prove that if Theranos did their jobs correctly that person would have survived.

It ends up being a long chain of probabilities. Would the real test have shown a false negative? Would the treatment have definitely cured them (given that most treatments aren't 100% effective)? Would they have even sought treatment? Etc, etc.

It's kind of like how if a substance ends up causing cancer it's very hard to prove that an individual got cancer from that substance. You can see the effect in aggregate, but at an individual level it's very hard to prove they got it from this substance instead of pollution or smoking or eating too much meat or flying or whatever.

This is the same. You can say in aggregate that the patients would have lived longer with accurate tests, but it's hard to say what an individual outcome would have been.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#302

Post by falseeq »

singleshot_ wrote: post #298
falseeq wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, good faith and fair dealing has nothing to do with this and shows that while you may know enough to pull out the restatement, you don’t really get the law. Good faith has to do with conduct in the execution of an agreement that undermines the deal without seeming to technically violate it. It doesn’t have anything to do with putting caveats in fine print.

False, of course; a bait and switch contract is a violation of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing. The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements. If you want to sit here and tell me that the contract actually says the car can't drive itself, that's fine but my hypothetical had nothing to do with a caveat in fine print. I suggest before you make a personal attac…

It’s very clear when you buy a Tesla that the car does not completely drive itself without human supervision. It’s part of the agreement, and the use of FSD as the marketing name of the feature doesn’t change that.

>The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements.

The issue is what was promised. The promise is not just the title of the feature, but all of the information presented to you when you buy a Tesla.

And I’ll contradict you all day if I want because you’re not just wrong, but clearly suffering from Elon Derangement Syndrome.

You’re clearly not a lawyer even if you role play one online.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#303

Post by micromacrofoot »

layer8 wrote: post #233
micromacrofoot wrote: post #49

I don't think she, or other non-violent criminals, should be in prison. There are much more affordable and constructive ways to handle this. This isn't rehabilitation or justice, only punishment.

It is deterrence.

For who? the US has one of the highest recidivism rates in the world

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#304

Post by AbrahamParangi »

wpietri wrote: post #299
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s morally fraught to argue “this child should not exist”.

I think that's a pretty bizarre way to take "this person should not have had children". Once they do it, we can't talk about it? Do I have to stop saying "let's work to end teen pregnancy" because of all the kids out there who whose mothers were teens?

The typical argument against teen pregnancy is that it limits the life options for the mother, whereas you're arguing that the having these children represents harm towards the children.

People usually don't make the argument that teen pregnancy harms the children of teen pregnancy because you're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#305

Post by wpietri »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #304
wpietri wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a pretty bizarre way to take "this person should not have had children". Once they do it, we can't talk about it? Do I have to stop saying "let's work to end teen pregnancy" because of all the kids out there who whose mothers were teens?

The typical argument against teen pregnancy is that it limits the life options for the mother , whereas you're arguing that the having these children represents harm towards the children . People usually don't make the argument that teen pregnancy harms the children of teen pregnancy because you're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children .

Sorry, but at least with respect to typicality, this is wrong:

> The typical argument against teen pregnancy is that it limits the life options for the mother, whereas you're arguing that the having these children represents harm towards the children.

I just googled "why is teen pregnancy bad" and every one of the relevant pages mentioned harms to children. And it seems pretty weird to me that you are so eager to sweep aside the harms to them. Those same teens could have children later and everybody would be better off.

> You're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children.

I am not, and that is an absolutely wild think to take from it. It's akin to the kooky arguments of anti-contraception types and frustrated would-be grandparents that not having a child is basically equivalent to murder.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#306

Post by wpietri »

RajT88 wrote: post #134
wpietri wrote: post #69

One of the questions I have about any fraudster is where they fall on the goof/sociopath spectrum. It's surprisingly easy to start a Ponzi scheme by accident, after all. You just offer investors good returns (legal), be too optimistic about how it will go (legal), and then give them the promised returns anyhow by using other investor money (very illegal). I suspect a number of companies even get away with it, as they…

The kind of person who would start having children in hopes it would buy leniency in sentencing.

That is a disturbingly plausible explanation.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#307

Post by polotics »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #281
polotics wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punishment is an essential element of justice. How can there be justice without punishment for the crimes committed. Or do you propose the dead will have their life rehabilitated somehow?

I was not aware that elizabeth holmes murdered people, how is this relevant?

Be aware then: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2022/01/04/theranos... If that doesn't qualify, then what does?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#308

Post by singleshot_ »

falseeq wrote: post #302
singleshot_ wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, of course; a bait and switch contract is a violation of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing. The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements. If you want to sit here and tell me that the contract actually says the car can't drive itself, that's fine but my hypothetical had nothing to do with a caveat in fine print. I suggest before you make a personal attac…

It’s very clear when you buy a Tesla that the car does not completely drive itself without human supervision. It’s part of the agreement, and the use of FSD as the marketing name of the feature doesn’t change that. > The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements. The issue is what was promised. The promise is not just the title of the feature, but all of the information pre…

Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong, etc.

Your negative one karma over the last 24 hours tells us everything we need to know about you, leaving my licensure status aside.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#309

Post by micromacrofoot »

polotics wrote: post #307
micromacrofoot wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not aware that elizabeth holmes murdered people, how is this relevant?

Be aware then: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2022/01/04/theranos... If that doesn't qualify, then what does?

It says she was found not guilty though? the rest of the article is paygated.

Also, it still doesn't seem to reference any deaths. There are no dead to be rehabilitated.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison

#310

Post by HelloMcFly »

wpietri wrote: post #300
HelloMcFly wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, maybe. I guess I'm just saying there is more than one plausible explanation for the decisions she made regarding motherhood. I may detest what she did, she doesn't need any defending. It's easy to be overly reductive about people, but most people have complex, unrelated, and sometimes contradictive motivations.

Again, so what? People who do bad things often have complex motivations. That doesn't make what they did not bad. Whatever Holmes's internal state, she chose to have children that she knew she was very likely to have to abandon. I'm sure there are things in her character and history that might explain this, some more sympathetic than others. But are you claiming there's something that could justify that level of disr…

> So what?

Because my original response that this conversation in a part of was to the comment:

> I cannot imagine the kind of person who has kids knowing there were good odds they'd have to abandon them for much of their childhood.

I think that's highly unimaginative and can reduces someone to caricature.

> But are you claiming there's something that could justify that level of disregard for the wellbeing of children?

First: Justify to whom? Who sets the criteria for what is a good enough justification? Your language on this rankles a bit. Especially because...

Second: Holmes children have a father of means, they have much higher odds of being well cared and achieving good life outcomes than most American children. And they'll have an opportunity for at least some relationship with their mother. You act like having a mother in jail is some sort of damnable curse that has been placed on this children.

Post reply on HN