Dang, I appreciate where you're coming from, and understand your sentiment. However, as a pathologist, and having sworn to defend the US Constitution for over 20 years, and having visited a number of the countries he mentioned, I'm inclined to not disagree with the poster. And I am inclined to suggest that killing people for profit is the best single basis for righteous fury.

Inflaming indignation like that isn't righteous. It's a mob behavior, not much different whether the target is guilty or innocent. It's just more socially acceptable when the target is (or is seen as) guilty.

Group rage is good for bonding a community—as Phil Ochs once put it, "the family that slays together stays together"—but that's not the kind of community we want HN to be. Indeed, how we react to situations where someone is (or is seen as) obviously guilty is a good measure of how well we're holding to that standard.

I realize the above may sound counterintuitive, but consider that the comments we get are the best predictor of what we'll get more of. Do we want more of those? The dynamic they lead to is people one-upping each other with fiery denunciations and getting ever more reflexive. We can't have both that and reflective discourse, and we want reflective discourse, including about bad things.

In my estimation (I'd like to be wrong!) righteous fury adds nothing to the pursuit of insight. And, again in my estimation,[0] we'll better distribute justice if we stay unbiased and seek to understand the situation.

The people at Theranos, especially the wrongdoers, probably want to be and feel understood. I think that's a step toward insight and justice.

Maximizing fury (I love the turn of phrase) makes people defensive, which aborts the insight-pursuit.

[0] Sorry to use so many qualifiers. Because I'm telling people how they should talk, I want to be as precise as possible.

I think mucking up blood tests that almost certainly lead to misdiagnoses should stir up some fury.

Stirring up some is not the same as optimizing for.

I really don't see how this is 'optimising' over stirring up fury. What are your metrics?

The "civilized countries" snark at the end was pointless and annoying, I agree. But still, I'm not sure why knowingly swindling ordinary people should be anything other than criminal, whether it's done in the guise of a medical service or as a simple street con. There were people in Theranos who knew exactly what was going on, knew the human cost of it, had the power to stop it, and still pushed forward. How are they better than any common thief?

>I'm not sure why knowingly swindling ordinary people should be anything other than criminal

We (or, to speak for myself, I) should understand:

how often does fraud happen in this industry as compared to others

what causes it

whether it's stoppable once started, and whether other companies have stopped when they've started

how different are kinds of fraud in companies

These example questions are statistical. I'd so much rather spend time getting a statistical picture of the situation than maximize fury against one bad actor. I think "blaming people"--as a way of conversing--is low-quality dialogue. This is how I agree with dang that the above comment is not what I'd like to see on hn.