High-status swindlers can genuinely deceive themselves with magical thinking

Evidence

Young millennial entrepreneurs like Holmes fell prey to harmful levels of magical thinking, which writer Amanda Montell defines succinctly as “the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect external events.” Holmes operated as if everything would somehow work out despite the repeated failure of Theranos’s core technology. A more disciplined swindler might have bailed sooner. Even after exposure, Holmes doubled down on CNBC, dismissing a damning Wall Street Journal exposé with the kind of motivational aphorism found on dorm room posters: “This is what happens when you work to change things, and first they think you’re crazy, then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 571

Categorization

• DEFINE: Quotes Montell’s crisp definition of magical thinking as the belief thoughts affect external events.
• XREF: connects to: Every great accumulation of wealth or power rests on fraud or force