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Comment by dumbfoundded | Hacker News Reader

It's a tricky subject. I lean for taking the money. I used to work in the media lab and honestly, it seems like a decent place. Pretty much everyone there is giving up a much larger salary at a FANG company to work on interesting things.

Did the Media Lab help Mr. Epstein rape more children in any way by taking the money? Probably not. Evil people can do good things. The world is complicated.

If people really want to start tracking the provenance of funding, perhaps we should start with investigating larger sums. No one in Silicon Valley seems to have any trouble taking money from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

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It's not that tricky a subject. Yes, the Media Lab, and everyone else who participated in the idea that Epstein wasn't a complete fucking pariah after 2006 or so - or at the very least, in 2008 - did help Epstein rape more children.

In 2008, Epstein should have been put in a cage and poked with sticks. The fact that so many of the great and the good were willing to continue to cooperate with him was disgusting.

Also: I agree with you about the Saudis, but whataboutery doesn't excuse the fact that taking Epstein's money was morally imbecilic.

Epstein absolutely should've been locked away in 2008. I think it's more of a failure of our justice system than the Media Lab. I don't think the Media Lab did anything to assist Epstein in any way except enabling him to say he donated money to them. I hope the Media Lab took his money out of necessity rather than convenience but I don't know.

I wish we lived in a world where all of Epstein's assets were seized and allocated to victims (both specific and general), educational institutions and whatever else seemed appropriate. I wish the Media Lab took Epstein's money in this way.

Honestly, it's really a philosophical question. It's the classic debate between consequentialism and deontology. I'd argue that the consequences of taking his money were positive. I'd assume you'd say the action is inherently immoral.

We could go back and forth, talking about the trolly problem among many other contrived examples. Tt's a tricky subject.

There's a lot of these situations out there like this Nazi anatomy book we still use: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49294861.

Ultimately, I think we could agree that there are worse people out there, deserving grave punishment, involved with Epstein. I'd rather see this energy be prioritized to identifying and convicting the worst people first. After, I think debating the Media Lab's funding less than 0.3% of its budget morally condemns it.

There's a consequentialist argument to refusing the money, too: you're helping Epstein launder his reputation.

By accepting his money and continuing to work with him, you're basically telling Epstein that he's free to continue raping children — that as long as he can wriggle out of the legal stuff, he won't suffer any real professional or social consequences. And instead of helping to deter other would-be Epsteins, you're sending them a message that no matter how many children they rape, they'll still be greeted warmly.

Absolutely a good point. I'd say practically, the Media Lab didn't change much in this regard but it's impossible to know the full extent.

I do think you hit a certain line with donations. Many of the charities and hospitals he also donated to probably don't have the luxury of deciding who their money comes from.

It's a tricky situation but I think you make a solid point.

But Epstein didn't make his money by investing in MIT. He made is money being a pimp. You think he'd stop pimping if universities stopped taking his donations?

To me, the direction of the causal arrow is unclear. Was he able to throw money at MIT (and fulfill his fantasy of scientific/academic relevance) because he was a pimp, or did his involvement with these universities allow him to get closer to powerful people whom he'd manipulate with the offer of sex from young women? I agree that it's hard to definitely say because we're still unsure how exactly Epstein made his money.

Do places like Media Lab actually know (and really know well) the people they take donations from? This is an actual question, not me trying to be facetious.

We can trace all these things back in retrospect now, but it's a different situation than accepting money from someone in the moment without knowing what will happen to them in the future. Who knows what kind of person someone could turn into over time. For example, some world leader could donate a bunch of money to education at MIT and then commit genocide 10 years down the line. What happens then at the 10 years when the money is spent already?

The argument is that his 2008 conviction should have been enough to make the Media Lab reject his contributions.

> Did the Media Lab help Mr. Epstein rape more children in any way by taking the money?

Yes it did. Epstein’s empire was built on high society connections which he established through his connections to influential and publicly visible leaders in science. Epstein’s support of the media lab allowed him to attract high profile pedophiles (royalty, presidents, more that we will probably never know) to his island parties where he developed the connections that protected him and kept him above the law.

Is that how Epstein’s business worked? It hasn’t been clear to me in the media that he actually made money on that.

I wasn’t referring to his business. I was referring to his child sex trafficking activities.

I feel like punishing MIT for taking money should really take a back seat to punishing literally anyone else involved in this case.

> Epstein’s support of the media lab allowed him to attract high profile pedophiles

That sounds ridiculous and needs explaining. "Oh, hi, fellow super rich pedophile, I wouldn't have contacted you, but then I saw you donated to the media lab... let's get together on your private island". No.

Except that it is pretty much exactly what happened...

Since he was well connected before that, you'll have to provide some evidence for the media-lab-pedophile-recruitment claim.

MIT had a similar internal debate about Saudi-affiliated funding, see https://thetech.com/2019/01/14/mit-cut-ties-saudi-arabia

Yeah. MIT also refused to divest fossil fuel holdings: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/21/mit-won-divest-...

Totally coincidentally, the Koch Cancer Research Center was wrapping up construction around the same time (https://ki.mit.edu/).

It turns out MIT isn't a morally guided institution (well maybe the professors and students are). It's run by a bunch of former investment bankers trying to maximize returns on a $16.5B endowment. There's a corporation and a university.

When you take money from people like Epstein, there are always strings attached. Now he will be entitled to visit the lab, leverage your social network, review the project, make recommendations, have students do their dance, invite you out to dinner, out to his island, offer you gift of sensual message... it's not just a slippery slop, it is intentionally designed for you to slip off. So not really that tricky subject.

If Jeffrey Epstein had preyed upon the children of the coastal elites instead of the children of the poor, I suspect that the subject would be less “tricky”.

I wonder if previous uprisings against the elites were preceded by similar displays of callous indifference for the suffering of the lower classes.

It doesn't change the moral argument from my perspective but if that happened, Epstein and many others may actually face punishment. I think I'd prefer that hypothetical.

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