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Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

It certainly seems like a plausible argument that better detectors leads to a smaller necessary sample.

> If the most qualified capitalists cannot tell whether a CEO is fraudulent, then it seems that we should alter the CEO appointment system somehow.

Why do you assume the problem is that human beings select CEOs and not that how we select the selectors is broken. That is, maybe the problem is who we decide are "well qualified capitalists"

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>It certainly seems like a plausible argument that better detectors leads to a smaller necessary sample.

But there is a limit to how small a sample can be regardless of the quality of the detectors because what you are looking for has to be in the sample. If the sample is merely a pinprick of blood, as Theranos (at least originally) claimed was enough, it very well might not be.

Sure. As a non-expert, I assume most drops of my blood have enough stuff in them to detect. How much can vitamin levels or viral loads change between drops of blood? Certainly they seem to draw more than strictly needed.

It depends on what you are looking for. Yes, for say small molecules like vitamins a pinprick (less than a microliter) could theoretically be enough. But if you are looking for things like early infection or cancer, the signals you want may not actually be in such a small sample at all.

That is, maybe the problem is who we decide are "well qualified capitalists"

I don't think that's a problem, as I don't think the decision is "well-qualified" as in competent, but rather "won't end up on the dole if this investment falls through". Henry Kissinger isn't signing up for food stamps/EBT because his Theranos investment went belly-up. The problem is that many thought, "well, if Henry Kissinger is in...", without asking about Mr. Kissinger's qualifications to evaluate medical claims.

Oh, "qualified investor" qualifications. In that case, why does anyone think that they would be particularly skilled at hiring CEOs?

Compared to who?

I'm not sure why they would be more skilled than any random people off the street, or a coin flip, etc. There's no reason to think they produce a result better than whatever control group you can think of compared to any other subset of people.

The modal random "qualified investor" is probably a dentist, not Kissinger.

And your point is you think Dentists (or Kissinger) should be presumed to be good at choosing a CEO?

I don't know why the person that started this subthread thought the CEO was chosen by the investors.

Holmes founded the company beforehand, then people gave her money. As far as I know.

So it seems a bit off to frame it as though someone else founded the company and hired her.

A company without investors is a bootstrapped small business. Investors without a company are venture capitalists. Without investors, a company never becomes a startup, never has front-page articles in newspapers and magazines, never gets invited onto cable news for interviews, never hires expensive talent, never buys sports cars for its executives, never spends millions of dollars on advertising, etc.

Without investors, Holmes never would have mattered. The investments are what enabled her to commit the fraud.

I don't see anything obviously incorrect about all that, but it's irrelevant to the fact (if I'm not mistaken) that the investors didn't get a business and hire a CEO to run it, they found a business with a CEO.

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