Most people (including rich ones) who had any scientific knowledge passed on investment/partnership. Humanity has developed ways to evaluate ideas without all of the contextual noise people are referencing in this thread. They’re just effortful and sometimes awkward, so too many people of all types just don’t.

I think particularly in the case of investors it's that they're pretty comfortable with founders that straddle the fine line between bullish and bullshit, because the ones who back up their claims that seem too good to be true make them money, and the ones who don't are priced in. And some who make them lots of money tell a lot of "white lies" on the way. FOMO is a way of missing red flags too.

Holmes' mistake was to massively overdo the "fake it til you make it" in a regulated industry where the implications of the lies appal people, as well as to have a product that was never going to work so the lies were more "this car definitely isn't just rolling down the hill" than "the person at the wheel is only for regulatory reasons". If she'd settled for fantasy metrics and self dealing in a real estate play rather than faking medical tests she'd have investors lining up to fund her second venture...

I'm more intrigued by how she managed to keep customers and at least some of her employees believing and how often that mask slipped.

I think there was an internet meme somewhere, that suggested something along the lines of: if you consider pain to be an essential learning signal, and that beyond a certain level of wealth, you can more or less eliminate pain, then the cognitive effects of such wealth is like being kicked in the head by a horse on a daily basis.

> Many rich people are really gullible to direct bold face lies.

I agree with this point. I think that in the investment world, many VCs investing in deep tech are not deeply familiar with the underlying technology. They often say they are betting on the founders, which can inadvertently encourage this behavior, since founders know that their investors are unlikely to scrutinize the technical details too closely.