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Comment by iaw | Hacker News Reader

I saw Holmes in SF around 18 months back. Photos don't do her justice, she's pretty charismatic in person but more strikingly she seemed very happy in the moment. If I had a similar sword of Damocles hanging over me I'd be in a horrible shape but somehow she seems just fine.

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I don't know anything about Holmes.

But if she was a psychopath, then this would track perfectly. Completely unphased and unstressed about the world of chaos she's created around herself.

I always found her to be… uncanny in photos and videos; intense in a disconcerting way. She looks like a perfectly normal CEO but there is something in her expression that suggests she doesn’t approach social interactions like most people. Like she is very calculating and works on a predator-prey worldview. Maybe I’m biased because I only ever looked her up after the allegations against her and said to myself “yup, that’s a psychopath”

The thousand-zuck stare.

There was reporting on how she intentionally changed her voice in public and one time got caught with her real voice. That to me validates her calculating predator-prey view.

That I could rationalize away: women CEOs facing sexism might benefit from acting more ‘corporate’ and dominant, and having a deeper voice is one tool in that arsenal. Good posture, firm handshakes and eye contact, etc. But yea, going to such lengths all the time would require insane amounts of masking that a neurotypical probably couldn’t manage.

You, unlike Holmes, live in the world of reality.

Potentially underrated commentary.

Strongly held beliefs (if delusional) really can paint a much prettier façade over reality. And the worse that reality may become, the more strongly held those beliefs become.

Until the, what was thought to be, unstoppable force of delusion meets the immovable object of reality.

This reminded me of the guy who lived in Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years[0] despite having numerous opportunities to leave. His own family visited and he pretended not to know them. He demanded to be known as "Sir Alfred" and sabotaged his own chances to leave by not accepting legal documents because they still had his original birth name and location, which he insisted were incorrect. Pretty interesting story, though pretty sad too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri

Anyone would likely be doing alright if we were married to a hotel heir [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes#Personal_life

shes a sociopath as far as the details have been explained.

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