Author: Rilaly

Influences: John Irving, Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Raymond Carver, Larry David, David Bowie, Mike Patton, and Ayn Rand. Style: Short sentences, easily readable, and little in the way of description. Genre: Information, humor, and psychological interpretation.

The Mystery of the History of Zero

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Zero has always meant nothing to us. It lurks in the shadows of something. It’s a number, but it kind of isn’t in some confusing, “I don’t want to think that much” way. It has its own identity, and it doesn’t. It’s complicated, and it’s not. It’s an odd number, but it’s not odd. It’s not even even, but it is and it isn’t. We don’t consider it prime or composite. It’s not positive or negative, as it separates the negative from the positive. It’s a number but it also represents the absence of a number. It’s so confusing to us that we have to wonder if teachers should even teach its advanced concepts, and if they do, at what age? We were taught the basic facts of how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide zero, but when we reached advanced mathematical concepts, we learned that certain mathematical answers cannot be answered. They’re undefined, which led us to say, “What do you mean undefined? It’s zero.” At this point, the mathematician explains that if we try to divide twelve groups of people into zero groups, it cannot be done. It’s undefined. It’s complicated, and it’s not.
As Andreas Nieder writes in a 2016 paper, “For a brain that has evolved to process sensory stimuli (something), conceiving of empty sets (nothing) as a meaningful category requires high-level abstraction. It requires the ability to represent a concept beyond what is perceived.” 
“We’ve now reached a point in our history where we have to describe nothing,” someone, with some sort of twisted brilliance, said at various points in human history to try to advance the cause of what we now call zero. “How can we properly appreciate the concept of something, without a concrete grasp of nothing?”   “But there’s always something,” his counterpart probably argued. “Is there nothing in the vast expanse of a desert? There’s sand, over one septillion of tiny grains of sand, and how many molecules litter the water of the vast quantities of nothingness in the ocean? Even in the vast expanses of space, there’s always something.”  Zero is not substantial when compared to the other numbers, and it’s not tangible, but how many of our current creations, and measurements for those creations, would be almost inconceivable without it? It’s been there for so long now that we take it for granted. Yet, it went through a long, slow, debated, and debatable gestation cycle. Even in the relatively limited historical record of ancient civilizations, such as those in Babylon, India, and the Mayan civilization, zero, or some semblance of zero, appears. We don’t know why it made an appearance numerous times in different civilizations. Its birth remains a mystery to us, because its purpose wasn’t defined. They invented the concept of zero, but there is no evidence to suggest that they developed it in a substantial manner. As with most theories, they appear to have failed to apply the concept of it to real world constructs, but we have to give them credit for developing the theory of it. Bottom line, their theory was probably as difficult for them to grasp as it was to explain, because there’s always something. Even if we laid four avocados on the ground and then removed them, there would still be the millions of granules of dirt beneath it, trees, leaves, and the micro organisms that feed on them. There’s always something. Scholars believe zero began its life as something to fill columns when humans advanced their attempts to count. When those who invented, developed, and applied a method of counting, they encountered a void after nine. Their question, how do we get past nine, and all the other nines that lead to ninety-nine without something to carry us to the next number. How do we get to eleven, twenty-one, and one hundred and one? India’s positional numeral system needed a zero to scale past 9, and their trade demanded it. They needed a placeholder, or something to fill the void. They didn’t start counting numbers with zero, but they wrote a placeholder in the tens, the hundreds, and the thousands to fill columns when necessary.   
In a Scientific American article, Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000), says “Filling columns is not a full zero. A full zero is a number on its own; it’s the average of –1 and 1.” “The Number Zero began to take shape as a number, rather than a punctuation mark between numbers, in India, in the fifth century A.D.,” says Robert Kaplan, author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero (Oxford University Press, 2000). “It isn’t until then, and not even fully then, that zero gets full citizenship in the republic of numbers,” Kaplan says. Some cultures were slow to accept the idea of zero, which for many carried darkly magical connotations.   But Seife is not certain that even a placeholder zero was in use so early in history. “I’m not entirely convinced,” he says, “but it just shows it’s not a clear-cut answer.” He notes that the history of zero is too nebulous to clearly identify a lone progenitor. “In all the references I’ve read, there’s always kind of an assumption that zero is already there,” Seife says. “They’re delving into it a little bit and maybe explaining the properties of this number, but they never claim to say, ‘This is a concept that I’m bringing forth.’” Kaplan’s exploration of zero’s genesis turned up a similarly blurred web of discovery and improvement. “I think there’s no question that one can’t claim it had a single origin,” Kaplan says. “Wherever you’re going to get placeholder notation, it’s inevitable that you’re going to need some way to denote absence of a number.”
The Revolutionary, Ancient Indian Dot
So, if the Babylonians developed a placeholder (a wedge) by 300 BCE, not a “full zero.” India’s leap—likely pre-Brahmagupta, with the Bakhshali manuscript (3rd-7th century AD)—was making zero a standalone number, and the Maya did it too, independently, by the 4th century AD, we might suggest that there is a well-defined trail but no clear-cut discoverer, inventor, or even a well-defined point of origin, of the number zero, as it was always just kind of there, but its functionality wasn’t even as clear to early users as the functionality of negative numbers appears to have been. If it was always kind of been there, but rarely used as a number, how did zero make the leap as a concept?   Why did the powers of the zero contain “darkly magical connotations?” As with all cultures, modern and otherwise, the unknown is beyond current capabilities to explain, so we assigned mystical, dark, and forbidden connotations to explanations of what we otherwise cannot. With that in mind, why did someone brave the “here, there be dragons” designation to further the concept, and what was the reaction among their peers?  What twisted, weird, and just plain different theoretician(s) sat in a bathtub and dreamed up ways to further the concept of nothing and zero. If he eventually managed to successfully sway his peers to accept the premise of this proposed furtherance, how did he answer their “And then what?” questions. Okay, we’ll accept the premise of your newfound importance of a zero, but what do we do with it? Theory is one thing, application is quite another. How do you propose we use it? What purpose will it serve? When we’re building a house, diagramming a structure, or figuring out how to use water in our fields, what purpose does a concrete explanation of nothing serve? Your point of reaching a greater understanding of something through nothing is a provocative one for pointy-headed intellectuals to consider in their philosophy caves, but how do we apply it to real world concerns? In my uninformed and admittedly limited search, I found no timeline specifically breaking down a concretized life cycle of the zero. Various points on the timeline state that it was discovered here, mysteriously listed there, and it appeared here, there, and elsewhere in the historical timeline, but in terms of some form of functionality it mirrors the resume of the misspent life of a cousin who did nothing in life. He was always there, but he never did anything noteworthy. No one knows how it happened, nor can they answer the when, where or why questions, but he became the star of the family one day.  The most interesting elements to the timeline of the zero are not the who and when, though they are interesting, but the philosophical push of how zero made its way into the halls of Physics, Calculus, Engineering, Geometry, relativity and quantum mechanics, and a large part of finance and economics to, in many cases, eventually lead the way to numerous modern advancements in these areas.  If dealing with natural numbers, i.e. 1,2,3 …, is dealing with tangible things and events, the zero provided more of an abstract idea for mathematicians. This provided mathematicians greater freedom from real world constructs and representational qualities into high-level abstraction. The eventual inclusion of the properties of the number zero was such that the advancements of modern mathematics would not be possible without it. Imagine being a renowned “genius” in one of the fields listed above, and you have a problem that has plagued you for much of your life. This genius has put this problem to a group of peers and his students for decades, and no one can solve it. The genius eventually labels this problem unsolvable, a 0̷, or no solution, until some egghead walked up to him in the town square, while he sipped on his brew and said, “Try putting a zero on it.” The renowned expert probably sent this egghead away with a “Yeah, great, Montenegro, now go home to your flock of sheep and your basket weaving, and leave me alone.” Until, the expert went home, and they hell’d it, and put that zero into his mind-boggling equation. Did the genius use the zero to solve the problem, or did he approach it in a way that he never considered before? Was the genius’ problem of solving for something only solvable by introducing the concept of nothing? It’s impossible to know if a representation of nothing had an epiphany affect on any one person soon after it was incorporated into theoretical or actual problems, but we have to imagine that the effects and affects were cumulative until we finally arrived at a collective epiphany that led us to fully incorporate it over time.
A very brief and succinct description of our favorite number/non-number zero is that it flickered in ancient Babylon as a placeholder wedge by 300 BC, but India’s Bakhshali manuscript (3rd-7th century AD) and Brahmagupta’s 7th-century rules made it a real number. The Maya mirrored this leap by the 4th century, while Al-Khwarizmi carried it to the Islamic world in 825 AD. Europe, stubbornly resisted until Fibonacci’s 1202 Liber Abaci, finally caught on—linking India, the Middle East, and the West in a slow, vibrant chain. The research suggests that if Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Al-Khwarizmi, and Fibonacci, and the other brave souls hadn’t weathered the storms to bring zero to absolute indoctrination, the progress we know today, “the opening of the universe,” wouldn’t have been possible. Zero defines nothing and everything at the same time. It can be used as a point of origin, in positive and negative ways, and some suggest that those brave souls ended up furthering knowledge to advance Physics, Calculus, Engineering, Geometry, relativity and quantum mechanics, and a large part of finance and economics. The very idea that the “nothing is something and something is nothing” complex identity of zero ended up playing a starring role in science. In Calculus, for example, zero provides a tease of limits, where functions flirt with the abyss as values approach it. In relativity, zero-point energy keeps the universe buzzing even at absolute rest, and in binary code, 0 as “off” teams with 1’s “on” to whisper digital secrets to us. Mr. Zero, as we should now address his highness, or lowness, depending on how we choose to view him, transformed computers from clunky gear-spinners to sleek bit-flippers, while revolutionizing physics and engineering. Without zero, we might have to work with Roman numeral guesswork to form the precise calculations necessary to build bridges and figure out planetary orbits. If the geniuses listed here hadn’t developed a theoretical counterpoint to something, in these fields and others, we might have to leave such matters to vague speculation and our imaginations. Imagine that!  Zero is also one of the primary languages of the computer. We’ve all heard the phrase ones and zeroes. Zeroes are needed to create code and messages that the computer requires for functionality. If the properties of zero were never invented, discovered, and advanced, is it possible we wouldn’t have the knowledge or the technology necessary for the computer?   Even after everything it’s been through and everything it has accomplished for us, we still have no love for zero. The full zero, standing on it’s own, and the average between -1 and 1, represents absolute failure in the classroom, a complete condemnation of athletic ability on a scoreboard, and desperation when it appears alone in our bank accounts (zero involves some desperation, but not the total devastation the negative numbers create in our equations). We considered calling someone an absolute zero to be worst insult we could say about a person, until Billy Corgan came along and reminded us of its positive, negative and abstract qualities. We also thought we had a firm grasp on the traits of nothing, until the writers of Seinfeld redefined it and showed us how brilliant nothing could be. Now imagine going back to a time before zero to explain to the most brilliant minds in math and science how zero and its resulting revolutionary concepts have reshaped our world. “Achieving something is just as important in our time as it is yours,” we might say, “but the most brilliant minds of the civilizations, since your time, couldn’t have achieved half of what they did without fully developing and realizing the properties and possibilities of nothing.”   

You Could Be the Entertainment. You Might Be the Genius 

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“A genius is the one most like himself.” —Thelonius Monk.  

We’ve all heard jokes about you being original. “You think you’re original? I wonder what percentage of the nearly 8 billion in the world consider themselves original? What percentage of the billions who lived before us thought they were original?”

What is original? Is it even possible to be original? Was Homer, author of the Odyssey original? What about Leonardo da Vinci, Dostoyevsky, or The Beatles? Most music critics stopped using the word ‘o’ from their reviews, because anytime they drop the word, the snipers come out to talk about all the influences they hear. If it’s impossible to be original, is it possible to create something uniquely personal? Is it possible to take all of your influences, artistic and otherwise, and do your thing so often that you find you? Will it be without influence? What is? No work of art is free of influence, and no influence is free from personal interpretation. Should you even try to be original if it’s impossible? With nearly 8 billion in the world and billions who have preceded us in history, the chances of you being somewhat redundant or derivative are pretty high?

If you can get passed the lengthy confusing originality-is-not-possible algorithm, you could do something that is so you that you might feel naked when it’s over. You might want to consider deleting the vulnerabilities that incriminate you, or you might not. If you leave it all in, it’s possible that some long-dead artist, who many consider one of the most original artists to walk to planet, might’ve considered you ingenious.    

Everyone started out wanting to be somebody else. We don’t start out all pure and raw. We lacked knowledge, skills, and the sense of security necessary to expose ourselves completely. We felt icky about ourselves when we started. We were insecure, we feared we had no talent, and we thought we were boring, or at least we’re not as entertaining as that guy.

Look at him, he’s got it all figured out. Every woman I know wants to sit with him and chat, he’s got a wad of dough, and everybody likes him. And funny, ohmigosh, if I could be just a little bit like him for one minute of one day, people might want to be around me, they might like me, and they might read me. We add a pinch of ourselves along the way. The other guy over there, he’s all calm, cool, and collected. He’s radiating self-possession. If I could wrap his aura around my neck for just one night, it could all be different. We add a dash of ourselves to it. At some point, in the painfully gradual process, we shed their skin and become more like ourselves, and if we become more like ourselves than anyone else can, it might be ingenious. Monk’s quote might be my new favorite quote.  

2) “We might as well be ourselves,” Oscar Wilde said, “everybody else is taken.”  

“I wish I could be more like Jarod,” Todd said. “He doesn’t care if anyone likes him.”  

Most of us don’t say such things aloud. We might think it. We might think Jarod has something ingenious going on, but we don’t talk to him to find out what he has. It’s understood. We develop a construction from afar, and we try to become it.

I talked to one of my constructed images once. As much as I tried to avoid it, I couldn’t help but convey how much I thought of him. I didn’t say anything along those lines, but I was so obvious about it that I could see it on his face. We were walking away from football practice, and he started dropping a slew of swear words on me. He wasn’t cursing at me. He was swearing in the smoothest manner he could find. I picked up a strange vibe. He appeared to be trying to live up to whatever image he thought I had of him. The idea that he tried so hard confused me, because he was the guy everyone wanted to be, and I was the anonymous nerd who faded into the background of whatever room I was in. I needed to develop skills to stand out. This guy accomplished it by just being him, or so I thought. In our brief exchange, I realized that I didn’t want to be him anymore than I wanted to be me. I realized that if I was going to continue to try to live up to the constructed images I had of people, the pursuit was probably better than the prize. I also realized that if I was going to project images upon guys like him, I probably shouldn’t talk to them.  

“You’re the entertainment,” I told Todd after he wrapped up his gripes about Jarod. “You’re the entertainment in the room, and you don’t even know it.” 

3) “You are who you are when nobody’s watching.” ― Stephen Fry

My goal in life is to control situations as often as I can. If I encounter a situation fraught with failure, I take over, because I would rather blame myself for failure than someone else. I see parents put their kids in awkward situations, and when these kids fail, the parents are shocked. They evaluate their kid’s failure by their own standards. I might over correct at times, and I might be what they call a helicopter parent, but I either try to frame failure according to age, or I try to prevent failure by taking control of the situation.

When my boy went to the refreshment stand in a restaurant to refill his cup, every instinct told me to just take the cup from him and do it myself, but I knew he had to learn, and I wanted to see who he was when he didn’t know anyone was watching. I stood back where he couldn’t see me, and I watched him. As he refilled his cup, I took a step back. It was painful to stand back and watch, but I couldn’t stop looking. After he spilled, I stepped back further. I wanted to see if he would clean it up himself. I wanted to see if he would look around after the spill. I didn’t realize until I smelled it, but I accidentally backed into the sphere of influence of an elderly woman. My first thought, when she expelled gas on me, was this might be her defense mechanism, warning me that I was too close. I thought of the octopus expelling an ink cloud to thwart the approach of predators. She couldn’t know if I was a predator, because she didn’t know me, so she probably considered it better safe than sorry when she let it go. I abided by her silent admonition by giving her distance. My boy cleaned up his mess without looking around, and he double checked his work to make sure his mess was all cleaned up. I made the right move by allowing him to make his own mistakes, and he unknowingly defined his character for me, but I paid a price for it. 

4) “Be it a song or a casual conversation. To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservations. Your words, once heard, they can place you in a faction. My words may disturb, but at least there’s a reaction.” Slash, Dave Lank, and Axl Rose. 

Back when I talked to my constructed image of the star football player, I considered offensive vulgarity the more honest approach. No matter how confusing I considered his effort, I thought he was being real with me. He fit the prototype teenager, but we don’t see that when we’re teens. We were influenced by movies, TV, and music. We had lists of which movies used swear words, and how many times they swore in such movies. If we were movie critics, we would’ve awarded stars accordingly. We also loved music, and while we all appreciated great pop songs, a song without at least a little vulgarity or innuendo, too safe. We wanted to hear dangerous, risky music, and we craved that in all artistic venues. We demanded the same of ourselves. The more vulgar and crude the more honest. We wanted to hand the holy grail up to the person who didn’t care if we considered them offensive. The truth is offensive, we thought. “I speak truth, and what does it say about you that you can’t deal with it.” What does it say about you that you said it? “I gotta be me!” So, you’re an offensive person? It took us a while, but we realized that a cup is handed down to the artist, filled with their offense.  

Due to the fact that the material nature of Rilaly.com is relative and subjective, we cannot guarantee our readers will be entertained or enlightened. We are introducing our new insurance policy that a reader can purchase if they don’t know if they want to take a risk by reading it. If you are not entertained, or enlightened, we will refund any amount the reader paid to us to read this, minus the cost of the non-refundable insurance.  

Is Elizabeth Holmes the Face of Fraud or Failure?

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If Elizabeth Holmes could’ve had an idea that worked, she could’ve been a contender, she could’ve been something real, and oh, the places she could’ve gone. The idea that we’re fascinated with this woman is obvious with all of the bios, documentaries, and news segments devoted to her. There are probably hundreds of different answers as to why, but I think it has something to do with the idea that her story is not a simple ‘person perpetuates fraud’ story. 


Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty by a jury of her peers of perpetuating fraud. That’s a fact, and the glaring headline, and it might influence everything we learn about her story. Her story is just the latest in the ever-present, not-going-to-end-anytime-soon Cringe-TV. We love to laugh, cry, and scream in horror, but we also love to cringe. There’s probably something wrong with it, as we shouldn’t love it this much, but when someone gives all their money to a con artist, and then they convince their friends and family to give their money to them too, we cringe with excitement. Do we think we’re better than the victims? If we did, we wouldn’t develop crinkles (cringe wrinkles) during our obsessive binges. Our motive, when watching these shows is not to find out if the fraudsters did anything illegal, but how they did it. 


After watching all of these shows, the viewing audience should ask themselves two questions. Did the 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford drop out of college to commit fraud, and if not, what did she know and when did she know it? Did Elizabeth Holmes want to become the next Steve Jobs so bad that she was willing to do anything to make that happen? Or, did that just kind of happen in the course of her troubled venture? Even though she was eventually deceitful, the idea that Elizabeth Holmes won over some of the intellectual glitterati of our nation is a testament to her talent, intelligence, and charm. She professionally seduced George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, David Boies, James Mattis, and, of course, Theranos Chief Operating Officer Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. She also managed to secure $700 million in funding from the likes of Larry Ellison and Tim Draper. At its peak, her company Theranos, was valued at $9 billion. 


Watching Hulu’s bio Dropout, HBO’s Inventor, the 20/20 news segment, or reading any of the web articles devoted to her story involves a battle between cringes and knee-jerk reactions. One knee jerk reaction we have is to now say Elizabeth Holmes was a con artist who engaged in fraudulent activity to secure funds from investors. We then dismiss her on that basis, but how many world leaders, politicians, and other charismatic, skilled, and deceptive people have attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of those luminaries listed above? Another knee-jerk reaction is to say that Elizabeth Holmes was a young, blonde woman who had obvious appeal to old, grey men. They might have enjoyed meeting with her. They might have enjoyed her attempts to professionally seduce them, but what happened when those meetings ended? A cadre of advisors probably sat down with the old, grey men and poured through her books, and they had a pro and con discussion with a George Shultz. He took their advice under consideration, and he ended up believing her. At one point in the story, Shultz even believed Holmes over his own grandson. How many years of experience did George Shultz, and all of the names listed above, have dealing with con artists and fraudsters? What does that say about them that they fell for Elizabeth Holmes’ deception, and what does it say about her? If she had a product that actually worked, imagine how real her success could’ve been. 


The Theranos Corporation had a machine called the Edison, so named because lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison said, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. The lightbulb was an invention with 10,000 steps.” How many careers were built out of try, try, and try again? Thomas Edison wasn’t excusing his failures. He was saying that he had to learn from the 10,000 misfires he made. Did Holmes’ Edison machine fail 10,000 times? “Who cares?” Holmes, Balwani, and all of the engineers and scientists could’ve answered. “Who cares if it fails 100,000 times. Imagine if we keep failing, and we learn everything there is to learn from those failures? Imagine if, one day, it works. We could transform the landscape.” The central question in this fiasco, to my uninformed mind, is is it possible that the Edison would have ever worked? If not, then we have beginning-to-end, no excuses, and full-fledged fraud on our hands, but what if Walgreen’s didn’t push for its arrival in their stores? What if Holmes and Balwani hadn’t pushed the engineers to make the Edison happen to satisfy Walgreen’s? Was it ever possible? Were the talented engineers and all of the employees they had on the payroll at Theranos for the money, or did they believe in Holmes’ dream? 


The Hulu bio Dropout depicts biochemist Ian Gibbons, who served as the chief scientist of Theranos, complaining that the Edison “is just not ready” for Walgreen’s. He was the first experienced scientist Holmes hired, his name was on all of the patents, and from everything we read about Gibbons, he was more than a believer. He was one of the chief architects of Holmes’ vision. The portrayals of Gibbons on the 20/20 story, the Hulu bio, and the HBO documentary The Inventor, suggest he was never a naysayer. They suggest that he just set rigorous benchmarks for the product. He doesn’t say, at any point, that this was a fictional dream that Holmes concocted (as a Stanford professor did), that it’s a fraud perpetuated on investors and the public, or that it will never happen. With all of his experience in the field of biochemistry, Ian Gibbons believed in the product, but he said it was just not ready to meet Walgreen’s timeline. There was a certain duality to Gibbon’s pleas however. He needed a job. He was in poor health, and he needed the health insurance that Theranos provided.  


What if they waited? Could they have waited? Would the money dry up if they delayed yet again? The stories of Elizabeth Holmes depict her as someone who had a natural gift for raising money. Could she continue to raise money at such a blinding pace, or were her chickens coming home to roost?  


Now that we know Elizabeth Holmes was successfully convicted of fraud, our knee-jerk reaction is to believe that the whole venture, from beginning to end, involved a years-long series of deceitful acts. Suggesting otherwise insults our intelligence. The details of her ambition suggest this whole venture was narcissism as opposed to altruism. Now that we all know this was a fraud, we tint our rose-colored glasses with such a heavy dark tint that we can’t see anything else. Did Holmes believe in this idea, at one point, or was she so desirous of her own Steve Jobs image that she would do anything to get it? In that light, she’s rightly depicted as a narcissist, but did she wear black turtle necks and lower her voice to become the next Steve Jobs, or were these façades her attempts to have the world take a 19-year-old (or however old she was at the time) blonde seriously, so she could sell an altruistic product to the masses, to save lives?   


In a fascinating, possible explanation of Elizabeth Holmes’ motivation for continuing “the lie”, behavioral economist Dan Ariely discusses a psychological experiment using a standard, six-sided die in the HBO documentary on this story The Inventor. In this experiment, the subject of the test is encouraged to predict the number of pips that will appear when the research scientist rolls the dice. One of the twists in this experiment is that the subject gets to pick the top or the bottom of the die, after the roll is complete. They keep that prediction, whether top or bottom, in their head. They don’t say it aloud. The scientists will give them a dollar for every pip on the die that appears with a correct prediction. If the number is one, they get one dollar, two for two, and six dollars if the number appears, top or bottom. In some cases, the die displayed one pip on the top and six on the bottom. “Which one did you pick?” the scientists ask, “The top or the bottom?”  


“The bottom,” they said, when the six was on the bottom.  


“Are you sure?”  


“Yes, I picked the bottom that time.” Boom, six dollars went into the subject’s pocket. In the next stage of the experiment, they are hooked up to a lie-detector to find that they lie some of the time to get the most money they can. The third part of their experiment involved charity. “All of the proceeds from a correct guess go to charity,” they informed the subjects. The scientists found that the subjects’ lies went up dramatically when the reward for their correct guesses went to charity.  


If Elizabeth Holmes genuinely believe Theranos was an altruistic venture that would eventually help save lives, then what was the harm of a few lies here and there? We all lie, and most of us lie for narcissistic reasons. What if we genuinely believed we could revolutionize the world, and as Holmes continually suggested we could spare our proverbial brothers and sisters from having to say goodbye to the world too soon? Would we fudge the numbers, lie to investors, and treat obnoxious employee questions the way Theranos did if it could buy a little time to see our dream actually come true?  


Elizabeth Holmes was told that this will never work by one of the Stanford professors she approached with her the idea. Our knee-jerk reaction, knowing what we know now is, why didn’t she listen? How many ingenious minds are told such things at the outset? Then we learn that another esteemed Stanford professor compared her to Mozart, Beethoven, Newton, Einstein, and da Vinci. Others said she might be the next Archimedes.  


Elizabeth Holmes had a childhood fear of needles, and she thought the products she and her team created at Theranos could spare future sufferers of this fear. She also thought that she could transform the medical industry. At some point, her dream ran into reality, which begs the old Watergate question: “What did she know, and when did she know it?” When she encountered Edison’s 10,000 failures with the Edison machine, she pushed on. Why did she push on? Did she believe in this machine, and this dream, that much? Or, was she in too deep? The cringe takes hold when the main character not only continues to lie, but she doubles down. “Why would you do that?” our cringe asks. “When it’s plainly obvious that you’re trying to swim out of a sand hole.”


How much pressure was Holmes under at this point? She had 800 employees counting on her, numerous investors, and friends and family counting on her to make this happen? She appeared on the cover of Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, and Inc. Magazine. She appeared on CNBC a number of times, spreading her gospel. How many of us could experience this level of adulation, coupled with the pressure that it entails, and say, “All right, well, we’ve failed ten thousand times, over the course of ten some odd years, and well, it looks like this thing doesn’t work, and it never will. Everyone can go home now. There’s nothing more to see here. We’re folding up shop folks, it’s now time to go home.” 


In the midst of our knee-jerk reactions and hours-long cringes, we turn to our wives and say, “At that point, right there, I would’ve been more forthcoming.” To which, our wife should’ve said, “And then what?” And then, after you’ve cleared your name of any fraud by declaring the dream over, everything is over. Everyone you know and love realizes that you’re not the golden child they thought you were yesterday. You’ll become a punchline, as everyone you know will begin to mimic and mock your forthcoming statement, and the life you knew for ten-plus years is over as you spend the rest of your life realizing that you peaked at thirty-years-old.   


Among the top CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, there is one characteristic common among them an uncommon belief in self. If Holmes shared this enviable trait, as many suggest she did, she believed she could overcome any obstacle before her, and to do so there are times when we might have to fudge and fib a little to encourage the skeptical and skittish around to trust our unwavering vision just a little bit longer? An edited number here and there to encourage the legions of media members and employees who worshipped you will mean nothing when this product finally reaches completion. When Theranos employees on the ground floor begin to ask questions, it’s fine, as long as they don’t discourage their fellow employees and spread poor morale. As long as they don’t violate their NDAs and speak to the press or their family and friends, we’ll be fine. Plus, forcing employees to sign NDAs is a common practice in Silicon Valley and the rest of the business world. Furthermore, the best CEOs learn to lean on some level of obfuscation to sidestep deep, penetrating questions regarding initial results of products during their gestational period. Did Elizabeth Holmes have an unwavering and uncommon belief in herself or her products, in a manner those in sales will say are one and the same?


*** 


“I’m not going to fall for this,” we say when we click on the app to watch an episode of Cringe-TV. We know the perpetrator has been convicted, and we know some of the details of the case, but we want to see the suffering. We want to see the faces of the people who were duped, and we want to laugh at them when they confess the extent of the betrayal went from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, and if we’re really lucky, we’ll see the face of that poor sap who dumped millions. We might see something wrong with us for enjoying it so much, but we keep watching.  


I just can’t wrap my arms around Elizabeth Holmes being a fraudster from beginning to end. As a former fraud investigator, I know she’s been convicted of fraud by a jury of her peers, but I can’t help but think Elizabeth Holmes believed in her idea for a majority of those twelve years and presumed 10,000 failures. I know many of the facts of the case, but I would love to know what happened to her when it became obvious that her products were never going to work. Did she and her team switch to Siemans’ products, and all of the other measures she used to allegedly defraud victims, or was she desperately seeking more time. Or did she fear that “What then?” question if she was totally forthcoming at some point.    

Fraud is perpetuated throughout our country on a daily basis from Silicon Valley to Bangor, Maine. How many of these acts are committed for purely narcissistic reasons, and how many of these paths are paved with altruistic intentions? We might never know what was going on in Elizabeth’s head throughout the trials and tribulations she experienced, and our knee-jerk reaction is to shut down all discussion on the matter with the fraud conviction, but think about what an incredible person Elizabeth Holmes could’ve been if she devoted all of the energy, talent, and intelligence that impressed so many luminaries of our society into something that actually worked.   

The other side of the coin, the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that Elizabeth Holmes was a woman. Going through all the interviews of her investors, and all the luminaries who invested in her company, I couldn’t get that fact out of my head. Elizabeth Holmes was obviously charismatic, she had a excellent work ethic, oodles of talent, and she had unwavering belief, but would all these people, including the financial magazines who had her image on the cover of all of their magazines, have fallen for her claims if she was a regular forty-something male CEO making substantial and exciting claims? We can only speculate, of course, but I think the idea that she was a woman relaxed some concerns. They wanted her to succeed, and they wanted to be the ones who were so open-minded that they didn’t want to be the type to speculate that her claims were just unrealistic, because that might subject them to the “Are you saying all this, because she’s a woman?” charge. We’ll never know, of course, but I have to think that a regular fella wouldn’t have received the benefit of doubt.