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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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I almost feel like there should be a mega-thread for “You Can See Everything.” It will be The Thing everyone online is talking about and writing think pieces about for the next few weeks. Spoiler-free review – it’s as good as everyone says, 9/10. Go in with knowledge of Elizabeth Holmes and what happened at Theranos, don’t go in with knowledge of what happens in the movie.

Some rambling spoilery thoughts from the morning after I watched it:

The movie confirmed my model for Elizabeth Holmes (and by extension, Billy) and many other con men/crazy people.

I think most people have far too binary of a view of these types. They model them as either cynical, lying, grifters who know that they are lying all the time, or insane people who have no contact with reality. I think the real answer is that they are both at the same time, but more by instinct than design.

My take is that the best modeling for Holmes+Billy is Nathan’s analogy to the David Blaine ice pick trick. What Blaine does is a “trick” in the sense that he is fooling the audience and he isn’t hurting himself, but it’s “real” in the sense that he is genuinely putting an ice pick through his hand.

Homles is an extremely weird person, and at least somewhat crazy. And I think her crazy/weirdness manifests in an extremely manipulative manner by instinct. I think she’s a chameleon who adapts to context to get what she wants. At Theranos, she adapted to the role of young, genius, female tech CEO; in “You Can See Everything,” she adapted to the role of poor, sad, beleaguered, earnest, wrongfully convicted, loving mother. Her behavior in the movie is primarily crafted to get sympathy.

But I don’t think it’s all an act, or even mostly an act. I think she’s a genuine shapeshifter. She simply does and says too much stuff that would run counter to a planned, orchestrated con act to get sympathy. Like, telling Nathan that she never lied while at Theranos is very stupid – strategic contrition is the far better play. And telling Nathan that she has literally never, ever lied in her entire life is so absurd that it completely destroys her credibility.

I think I have a little bit of personal insight on this by seeing a friend go through a horrible relationship with a borderline personality disorder girl. She ruined his life for years with emotional manipulation, and though she would have occasional moments of clarity and realize what she was doing, most of the time it was pure instinct. This woman would seemingly genuinely believe that her partner was a piece of shit who deserved to die in one moment, and then ten minutes later she would be head-over-heels in love with her partner and feel that she will die if they aren’t together. The contradictory mental states and beliefs were both real, the mind itself flipped according to subconscious dictations trained and modeled by repeated uses of extreme emotions to manipulate her partner.

There is a part in Scot Alexander’s “You’re Still Crying Wolf” that has always stuck with me where he says that so much of Trump’s seemingly evil behavior is explained by him just being really weird. He talks weird, he acts weird, he constantly does things that normal people can’t model onto a real person because it’s so weird. And that weirdness in part explains his evil. Trump probably didn’t accuse Obama of being born in Kenya out of racism, but out of weirdness.

I think this movie is a great display of this concept. People tend to underestimate the depths and complexities of weirdness. Holmes is an extremely, deeply weird person. Maybe its autism, maybe its some other psychological disorders, maybe it’s just have different personality nobs turned way up or down, but it all amounts to a weirdness that no one can quite wrap their minds around or model, even after a 3 hour documentary.

And Billy appears to be a kindred spirit. There’s a scene where he describes his relationship with Holmes in a completely insane and blatantly manipulative and controlling manner, saying crazy shit like Elizabeth spends every second of every day thinking about how to build monuments to her love for Billy. He sounds like an awful sociopathic narcissist abuser. Then later in the movie, Elizabeth says the same exact stuff about her love for Billy, which indicates that they are both deeply weird and maybe crazy people, but they are, in a sense, right. Their love is (probably) not some insane manipulation, it is real and authentic, but it is so weird that it looks like abuse from the outside.

Truly successful grifters almost always have to believe.

Almost.

I think if you actually look at the scammers that the public is most fascinated with, year after year and decade after decade, it’s not the crazy true believers. Or at least it’s not the obvious true believers. There are a lot of those. Holmes was a true believer, and a crazy one, but seems interesting because she was a blonde autistic woman in a world of men and because the blood testing thing was more salacious / bloody / fun than the usual scam. Like Trump’s inner life isn’t very interesting. He believes he’s the best and always has had supreme confidence in himself, psychologizing him isn’t appealing - even libs don’t really do it more than halfheartedly, they just call him an evil narcissist.

I actually think the public is most fascinated by the very small minority of grifters for whom doubts exist about the extent to which they believed in their own innate luck. Examples that come to mind are Anna Delvey and L Ron Hubbard. Delvey never believed in her grift, she just thought everybody else was stupid and deserved to pay for her. Hubbard literally wrote his own science fiction and seemed to be relatively self aware, those who have studied Scientology’s history have often argued he never really did believe the way that his successors did. Another example? Madoff, who shielded his own children from his scheme.

Absolute self-belief is common. To hold the knowledge that you’re a fraud in your head and still continue takes much more fortitude, and makes for a much more interesting grifter.

Hubbard literally wrote his own science fiction and seemed to be relatively self aware, those who have studied Scientology’s history have often argued he never really did believe the way that his successors did

I'm reading a book about Joseph Smith at the moment and I'm really struggling to put myself in his mind and work out whether he really thought Jesus was talking through him. Like, he clearly believed in God and cared about religion (hence the fact he spent ages retconning the Old and New Testaments to get rid of all the obvious contradictions) but also his 'revelations' were so transparently self-serving. Like sureeee Joe, a big scary angel with a sword said he would kill you if you didn't have sex with all those teenage girls. You really didn't want to, but you're scared of the angel!

I think it is hard to read the CES Letter and conclude Joseph Smith was anything other than a fabulist.

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