M.I.T. Media Lab concealed its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Ghiridaradas is author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World [1]. He was also on the panel for MIT Media Labs' Disobedience Award. It was their answer to the MacArthur Foundations' "Genius Grants". Reid Hoffman, of LinkedIn, Greylock, and Blitzscaling fame is the donor who sponsors the Disobedience Award. He comes out looking...not good.
[0] https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1169947031806365696?s... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37506348-winners-take-al...
I had a long comment explaining my interpretation backed by quotes, but it's too long for HN apparently so here is the link, at a text storage site (I couldn't get past pastebin's "SPAM filter" captcha)
https://textuploader.com/192lt
EDIT: I am not on twitter, so if anyone could mention this to Anand I would appreciate.
You're giving Giridharadas way too much credit. His e-mail resignation is an implicit ultimatum (if you don't fire him, I will go public), to which Hoffman counters by saying how he will try to frame Giridharadas as trying to personally gain from this scandal (which, clearly he will).
By publicly stating Hoffman's weak threat, while reserving the future threat of revealing their correspondence, Giridharadas makes it harder for Hoffman to follow through on the threat without public backlash.
So Giridharadas targets this tweetstorm to inflict maximum damage to Ito supporters and MIT admins. The hush money line is harder to prove and channels frustration towards the hushers more than the facilitators. The cash for prestige line places all the blame on Epstein and Ito. Then he publicly shares the list of Ito supporters [0] and creates public knowledge of their thinning numbers. When the firing eventually occurs, Giridharadas will have collected the spoils of a successful cancellation, the public knowledge that he can make very credible threats.
If you are correct, we should expect Giridharadas to place more emphasis on the hushers for the sake of justice. If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito.
[0] https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1170025167063605250
A very good person can also be someone who makes calculated moves. The two characteristics are not mutually exclusive.
To be clear, there's no comparison between the parent comment's model of Ghiridaradas's actions and those of Ito et al, and AG's telling of their actions is pretty damning regardless of his motivations.
But responding to someone trying to flesh out a better understanding of the situation by mentioning his motivations (without excusing one iota the far-worse actions of others) with "NO THERE CAN ONLY EVER BE ONE SIDE DOING BAD THINGS" is about as simple-minded a take as I can imagine.
If one does not want to be associated with the scandal, because he has nothing to do with it, surely he should have the liberty to distance himself without having to also play the secret keeper for others? He never signed up to be their secret keeper. He tries to give the benefit of the doubt, and begs for explanations of their silence, for explanations of their decisions. So when none are provided, surely his right to free speech permits him to speak about whatever he witnessed from his perspective?
Sometimes the only identifiable "ulterior motive" is the freedom one has maintained by not becoming complicit...
in "we should expect",
1) "should" means "would" or
2) "should" means Anand "should if only he saw the bigger picture of hush money / cloack of charity" ?
if 1) this assumes Anand has the same interpretation I have (that its not prestige-for-cash but hush money), but as I wrote in my text it mostly seems like Anand does not realize this at all.
it 2) of course the hushers, but also the hush money enablers, which would include Ito & Co, if no one lets Anand know of this hush money interpretation one can not expect Anand to focus on the hushers! I don't have twitter, again could someone mention this to Anand?
>If I am, we should expect him to put all effort into bringing down Ito.
Anand's prediction goes further than just Ito: he also predicts MIT will investigate itself and absolve itself, so he doesn't just condemn Ito as you claim, and given Anand's own admission from the start that he used to respect Ito largely explains his disappointment in Ito specifically!
If "seriously tainted" means "directly linked to Epstein's criminal activities," I'd be amenable to the suggestion. But I find it concerning that the writer feels no need to be specific (though he includes vague accusations that Ito visited Epstein's private residence). Frankly, the whole thing seems like a power play to me. Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems to me that Ghiridaradas is exploiting the situation to raise his profile.
Epstein had social relationships with many people who likely visited his private residences. We can't throw them all out because most of them are innocent. The failure point with Epstein was the justice system. What happened? Why was he allowed to walk? I want answers, but I'm skeptical of a witch hunt aimed at anyone who knew him.
Did you read TFA? I think it's quite clear what "tainted" and "seriously" mean.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Can you share what these words mean to you, or your impression of what they meant to the author?
From this, it is clear that some people were "seriously tainted" by Epstein's involvement.
Is there a question of where to draw the line? Sure. We don't have have all of the information, so clearly we can't draw a line. But when OP says
It strikes me as inappropriate to suggest that "Anyone seriously tainted by Epstein should step down". What does "tainted" mean? What does "seriously" mean?
the clear argument is that, because drawing a line is hard, we shouldn't call for any action against those who have stepped over it. That's an insult to his many, many victims and provides cover for his enablers. Honestly it's an affront to women everywhere.
I think you're putting words in his mouth. He doesn't want to see no consequences whatsoever for those who were involved with Epstein, GP argues that people are drawing arbitrary boundaries with no clear repeatable definition and then taking action on them. He wants to understand what precisely being "tainted" entails and why a particular definition is deserving of the consequences such a label entails. In other words, he rejects arbitrary and subjective persecution for an objective approach to justice.
To me it seems that certain people are using Epstein as a cudgel in order to remove obstacles from their path. I don't think it's reasonable to expect billionaires, public intellectuals, and the MIT Media Lab to prevent the rich, charismatic, and utterly amoral Epsteins of the world from getting around town. That's the justice system's job. They had him and they let him go. Blaming people who "enabled him" is post-hoc nonsense.
I want to know:
1. Did Epstein (as some people have been murmuring) have a relationship with some nation's intelligence agency?
2. Why did the Justice Dept. let him go?
3. Did he blackmail someone? If so, who and how?
4. Did he throw his money around to get off? If so, in what ways exactly.
5. Did two cameras actually "malfunction"? Why was he taken off suicide watch?
How about investigating the corruption that let him off the hook and shunning those with power and influence who minimized Epstein’s crimes by choosing to associate with him socially and professionally after the extent of his immorality was common knowledge? Can we not walk and chew gum at the same time?
None of these people would have acted similarly if the person in question was someone like OJ Simpson or Bernie Madoff who had been disgraced for more ‘conventional’ reasons. So why did Epstein get a pass? Is it because many of these people secretly believe that what he did wasn’t so bad? That is, unfortunately, what their behavior appears to communicate.
I don't think it's a false dichotomy. I think every ounce of moral outrage spent condemning those who associated with Epstein (and, in some cases, stripping them of their positions) is an ounce less to spend on uncovering how Epstein got off in the first place.
Anyway, I suspect we'll be fairly successful at the former and not so successful at the latter.
Anyway, I think you have it exactly backwards. People are not angels and the idea that "we can become a more moral society by calling out the bad people" seems incredibly suspect to me. We have systems in place to deal with transgressors. In this case, those systems failed. I want to understand exactly why and how they failed. Now, perhaps the systems really did fail because "people are apathetic" or "people don't care about crimes against women" and we can fix the problem by shaming people who were apathetic. But I'd prefer a more detailed analysis. It's not at all clear to me that Epstein got off because people were apathetic.
You've provided exactly zero evidence backing up this claim. Intuitively, looking into Epstein's associates would help uncover examples of his judicial malfeasance. Why is this not the case?
> Just because you can imagine that those things are unrelated doesn't make it so. Of course, that goes equally for me: just because I can imagine that they are connected doesn't make it so.
This is not a real argument. The burden of proof is on you, since you are the one claiming there is some sort of tradeoff.
> By using that term, you are claiming that there is no connection between the "moral outrage against Epstein associates" part and the "actually getting to the bottom of how Epstein got off" part.
This is not what "false dichotomy" means. "Dichotomy" implies that there is inherent tension, not that two things aren't connected.
Steven Pinker literally helped out with Epstein’s defense...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
If it was indeed him, he visited Epstein's island and accepted a massage and sex from a girl ~40 years his junior when he knew the man who procured her had already been convicted of underage sex crimes....
They all had to know that he had a vast criminal record involving prostitution and minors, and yet they continued to develop relationships with him.
Would you feel comfortable developing a relationship with someone involved in a high-profile sex crimes case that had tremendous amounts of damning evidence? Epstein, for some reason, seemed to have a pretty active social life even after his trial. And it's striking how many around him downplay their relationships with him now, or actively tried to conceal his role in various activities, as MIT Media Lab did.
> Peter Cohen, the M.I.T. Media Lab’s Director of Development and Strategy at the time, reiterated, “Jeffrey money, needs to be anonymous. Thanks.”
The head of the media lab knew Epstein's donations needed to remain anonymous.
> In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, “This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.” Cohen replied, “For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.”
They actively took steps internally to make sure Epstein's name wasn't on anything involving donations he directed from people like Bill Gates. So why did Bill Gates deny Epstein was even part of it? That doesn't add up.
> Signe Swenson, a former development associate and alumni coordinator at the lab, told me that she resigned in 2016 in part because of her discomfort about the lab’s work with Epstein. She said that the lab’s leadership made it explicit, even in her earliest conversations with them, that Epstein’s donations had to be kept secret.
Staff members knew what was going on, and in some cases, resigned over it.
Peter Cohen clearly knew that Epstein was not be named anywhere in fundraising activities involving him, there was clearly culture at MIT Media Lab of obscuring his donation activities, and staff members resigned over it because they knew who he was.
Hiding contact with a wealthy sex criminal and then lying about it doesn't look very innocent.
"Contact" is vague and allows people to fill in the blank with a more sinister narrative. They took gift money that Epstein was "directing" (i.e. not his money), and decided not to mention Epstein in the record of the donation. I don't see a problem here.
My point is that seven degrees of separation from Jeff Epstein seems like a distraction from the real issues here. I also think it's unreasonable to expect people whose job is begging for money (and whose continued employment is tied to their ability to get it) to be particularly stringent about whom they accept the money from.
Also consider that Epstein's plea deal probably gave people like Ito and Gates some source of comfort. If the feds let Epstein off, he probably didn't do anything that bad, right? If the system catches you and then lets you go, that's a sign that you're not that reprehensible, right? Clearly that was not the case here. So why did Epstein get a deal? To me, this is the real issue, and this article is a distraction.
> According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room.
> On the day of the visit, Swenson’s distress deepened at the sight of the young women. “They were models. Eastern European, definitely,” she told me. Among the lab’s staff, she said, “all of us women made it a point to be super nice to them. We literally had a conversation about how, on the off chance that they’re not there by choice, we could maybe help them.”
They continued to work with someone whom they suspected of trafficking women. Not years prior, before his trial — right there in their own office. That’s beyond the pale. That’s what “tainted” means.
Yes, Epstein’s plea deal for 13 months of prison time with offsite work privileges was a monstrous miscarriage of justice. That’s also an issue we need to fix. But let’s not pretend that this is the first we’re learning of the justice system’s heavy tilt in favor of rich people. There is no way Ito and Gates were unaware of how someone’s wealth and connections could allow them to escape justice.
So anyone who interacted with Epstein while his assistants were present is tainted? Or is taint contingent upon suspicion? If you met Epstein and decided that the rumors were baseless, are you not tainted?
> Yes, Epstein’s plea deal for 13 months of prison time with offsite work privileges was a monstrous miscarriage of justice. That’s also an issue we need to fix. But let’s not pretend that this is the first we’re learning of the justice system’s heavy tilt in favor of rich people. There is no way Ito and Gates were unaware of how someone’s wealth and connections could allow them to escape justice.
I'm tired of hearing people say things like "we know the rich can abuse the justice system" and shrugging it off with "that's a problem we have to fix". Yes, those things are true, but it's the problem we have to fix. Choosing to spend your time and energy criticizing people who didn't vet their acquaintances to your high standards or accepted money from unclean sources is unproductive. Pardon my bluntness, but I simply don't care very much that various people lack the moral scruples required to avoid the Epsteins of the world. I think most people lack those scruples, it's just that most people never get an opportunity to interact with an Epstein in the first place. They are never tempted.
How exactly did Epstein's wealth and connections get him off? That's the crux of the issue. Everything else seems like a sideshow to me.
You asked how Epstein’s wealth and connections got him off. Here’s how: he knew powerful people who were willing to minimize or ignore his transgressions. That’s it. It’s how he escaped with such a lenient sentence legally, and it’s how he was able to continue working with organizations like MIT Media Lab professionally. You’re acting like these are entirely separate issues, when really they’re just two sides of the same coin.
I am very interested in exactly how "knowing powerful people" translates into a plea deal. That process is what I would like to focus on, and I am not willing to take it on faith that this is the result of a general kind of apathy or a sense that Epstein was beyond punishment.
Maybe people are just hungry for a "win" here and the MIT Media Lab is an easier/weaker target than the CIA or Mossad. I'd feel bad for them if their behavior in this saga hadn't been utterly reprehensible and telegraphed at so many points that they knew what they were doing was wrong.
Back in 2008 Epstein was officially convicted. Now Epstein is dead.
Do you mean that Epstein's wealth and connections allowed Epstein to escape justice by suicide?
For one thing, it's absolutely a fundraiser's job to be stringent about who they accept money from. Non-profits and banks are subject to money-laundering and anti-terrorism-financing laws that explicitly dictate "know your customer" (or donor in this case). You should never ever, deal with people that you're not comfortable being publicly associated with.
> If the feds let Epstein off, he probably didn't do anything that bad, right?
That's the source of this entire controversy, and a point that I vehemently disagree with. The prosecutor who gave him that plea agreement had to resign from his Trump admin post because of the backlash from his decision. Epstein was accused of horrific crimes, which there were mountains of evidence attesting to, and yet he basically walked away and the investigation just stopped.
Epstein got a deal because he was friends with people like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, who certainly wouldn't want an investigation into the nature of their relationships. Based on what's available publicly, it's absurd to argue that the Feds didn't punish Epstein, ergo Epstein didn't really do anything "that bad".
Grooming and sexually abusing minors for decades certainly sounds "that bad."
You misunderstood my point completely. I'm not saying that the government's decision to give him a deal actually means he didn't do anything wrong. I'm saying that it likely appeared that way to many people.
> Epstein got a deal because he was friends with people like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, who certainly wouldn't want an investigation into the nature of their relationships.
Is that why he got a deal? Can you provide documentation of this? To me, this is the crux of the issue. If "knowing people" is enough to get a plea deal then we have a problem, a much bigger problem than "MIT accepted $ from bad person".
> Based on what's available publicly, it's absurd to argue that the Feds didn't punish Epstein, ergo Epstein didn't really do anything "that bad".
As mentioned above, I'm not making this argument. I'm arguing that it wasn't absurd to think this way before the Epstein thing went mainstream. There were all kinds of rumors swirling around Epstein and I don't think it would have been unreasonable at all to dismiss them as rumors based on the fact that the feds let him off with a deal.
This naiveté is undermined by the fact that the fundraisers themselves had very serious discussions about what to do if the women he insisted accompany him anywhere were being trafficked and wanted a way out. They knew exactly who this guy was, the story makes it perfectly clear.
Huh? KYC only requires you to check that the money is legal (on both ends - incoming (money laundering) and outgoing (financing terrorism)). Nothing else.
Personally, I'd prefer to take money from someone like Epstein. I'm 99.99% certain I can direct the money to a better goal than he can (I'm only about 40% certain about Gates' money and about 2% certain about Musk's money).
The problem isn’t “donating money”. The problem is “selling something” (be that influence and prestige in case of Epstein, or equity and future profits in case of Saudi money).
Rapists that donate are better than rapists that don’t donate. Disagreeing with that is a classical case of the ad hominem fallacy (“you’re bad therefore everything you say / do is bad”). In case of Epstein an additional problem was that he was a powerful rapist. But the proposition that his power came from donations is naive. Power and donations have a common cause - money.
Except that its not seven degrees of separation its exactly one degree:
"Mr. Ito said during the meeting that he had visited Mr. Epstein’s Caribbean island twice to raise money, which he has pledged to return or donate to causes that support sex-trafficking victims."[1]
And just to be clear that Ito was in fact aware:
">Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent architect who helped found the lab in 1985, told the crowd that he had met Mr. Epstein at least once since Mr. Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea in Florida for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and had advised Mr. Ito about the donations. I told Joi to take the money,” he said, “and I would do it again.”
>"Also consider that Epstein's plea deal probably gave people like Ito and Gates some source of comfort."
Wait, what? Why should anyone consider that? What kind of people take comfort in a wealthy person using their connections to bargain down a federal sax trafficking charge down to two felony "prostitution with a minor" charges?
[1]]2]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/business/media/mit-media-...
There is no way that none of these people -- especially the ones with means, like Bill Gates or Reid Hoffman -- had any inkling of Epstein's real nature. They just calculated that his money outweighed the risk to themselves or their institution from taking it, not to mention the shame (if they indeed ever felt any whatsoever) of helping a convicted sex offender against children rehab his reputation.
If that relationship consisted of them anonymously giving me money, and me giving them nothing in return, then maybe?
Maybe I’m missing something, but how did Epstein benefit from this anonymous relationship with the MIT Media Lab?
There is nothing anonymous about this at all. Negroponte has admitted he knew about Epstein's conviction in 2012.
And I quote "We all knew he went to jail for soliciting underage prostitution,” said Negroponte. “But we thought he served his term and repented."
What a fucking joke.
If you’re unlucky, you’ll look over your shoulder one day and see something you can’t unsee.
Its the government's job to prosecute people and encumber assets.
If the assets were part of a crime, the government has all the tools in the world to freeze those assets even if I don't agree with that ability either. if the government does not have the capability of freezing the assets, they have the capability of flagging them via sanctioning of [foreign] individuals.
this is not the responsibility of recipients. it is disingenuous to pretend like it is.
MIT Media Labs acted the way it did because they accurately assumed you guys would act the way you did. Think about all the other anonymous donations that occurred over the last decade and even today. You have no idea who is doing what and it doesn't matter. You still want projects funded, you still want cancer cured. The transactions themselves really has nothing to do with people's "access" and behavior.
Focus on the good the money did. Focus on it being Bill Gates' money if it helps you sleep better. Focus on the money not being "discovered" to be proceeds of human trafficking.
> If the assets were part of a crime, the government has all the tools in the world to freeze those assets even if I don't agree with that ability either.
I'm not arguing that the government was incapable of doing its job. I believe, like many others who watched the Alex Acosta scandal unfold, that the government intentionally gave him a lenient sentence, for reasons we don't fully understand. MIT knew this and actively worked to keep his relationship with the school private. Why would they keep the relationship private if they didn't think what they were doing was wrong? Or are you arguing that MIT Media Lab is only permitted to act only for its own interests, even if that means working with people who was charged and convicted of sex crimes? The public shouldn't care when a known sexual predator forms secret financial relationships with a high-profile university? The guy had his own private cabin at a prestigious music summer camp for kids in the '90s.[0] This dude was a predator, but you're essentially arguing that the public has no right to know who MIT, an entity that relies heavily on public funds[1], chooses to take money from? Taxpayer funds go to pay the people working with the predators, how on earth is that not the public's business?
0: https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-had-his-own-lo...
1: http://president.mit.edu/speeches-writing/federal-funding-pr...
The person who was charged and convicted of sex crimes paid their debt to society by doing what the government told them to do. That's how it works. Criticizing that outcome is done in isolation.
I'm not arguing anything more nuanced than that.
I'm not arguing anything about donor disclosure, or the predictable consequences thereof. I'm not arguing anything about who is acting in whose interest.
It is a tragedy that our society makes a prior conviction and a sex offender designation affect people without assets by isolating them from employment opportunities and living arrangements. It is a privilege that a prior conviction and sex offender designation doesn’t affect people with liquid assets as they do not require employment to be a productive member of society. But now people are trying to extend this tragedy to the flow of assets? Silly. Uncouth.
I gather people are looking at the specific scenario and wanting to agree with the “well I wouldn’t want a sex offender to give me money either” idea, and not really considering the broader perspective of how debt is repaid to society by the government and not by the private persons.
To me, it seems that people are arguing for the societal freezing of $500M+ in assets, and that doesn't make any sense to me since money doesn't work that way and will easily route around that whether it is simply writing anonymous on the donor form, or simply forming a new LLC to obfuscate the origin. You direct the money to your causes intended to help a greater good, a simple utilitarian perspective. More benign sources of money do all those things already. It is pure hubris to think you would even have known about the origin of a donation for the privilege of judging.
Are you implying that it is immoral to develop relationships with former criminal convicts?
Besides, he wasn't the kind of criminal who killed someone in a fit of rage or robbed a bank only once. He was way worse than that. God knows how many underage girls were his victims and for how long. And he wasn't even punished for his crime.
I for sure will stay from such people unless I'm sure that guy in question has actually mended his ways.
Did Epstein continue to run prostitution business after being convicted?
Or did Epstein continue to have sex with girls younger than 18?
I tried to find any references to that, but only found older cases (2008 and earlier): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Civil_cases
This is not to say that in the Ito case the info seems to be pretty damning, as at least from the way it is presented in the article there seems to be explicit collusion, but I would hesitate to broaden this to everyone who met Epstein or did business with him in some regard.
This doesn't seem that complicated.
Bringing a known child predator in those spaces, and socializing with him in order to fund the institution is not ok.
People at MIT, most notably Ito, have defended those decisions as innocent mistakes.
You seem to agree, and you and anyone else who feels that way should enjoy MIT. There’s a lot there to enjoy.
But the rest of us are saying, the institution has revealed itself as unfit to care for minors.
And anyone who takes that mission seriously is right to resign.
There are other schools which do take these concerns seriously.
"Throughout, the meeting had proceeded calmly. But as one of the organizers began to wrap things up, Negroponte stood up, unprompted, and began to speak. He discussed his privilege as a “rich white man” and how he had used that privilege to break into the social circles of billionaires. It was these connections, he said, that had allowed the Media Lab to be the only place at MIT that could afford to charge no tuition, pay people full salaries, and allow researchers to keep their intellectual property. "
I know you're just quoting the article, but it feels sort of slanderous to include this detail without the proper context.
I wish I had studied philosophy.
I recently learned (from HN) about the Copenhagen Effect. It helped me to think about why attempts to help, then they are not entirely successful, often get criticized harshly.
I am looking for a layperson's guide to ethical theories.
I first imagined a 20 questions style game. Given hypothetical ethic conundrums, the student answers questions, leading to a strategy. Like with interactive fiction, the student can explore different choices. This corpus could be built organically, over time (1).
This short story you shared suggests another idea. Something like China Miéville meets Gulliver's Travels. Where Gulliver encounters various societies faced with the same ethical dilemma and how they responded.
It's probably silly to think so vast as belief systems can be so easily summarized. But maybe it could be useful start.
(1) Much like the Apple ][ educational game called Animals, which tried to guess the animal you're thinking of, and add new ones. Gah, I can't find a link.
https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Ethics In The Real World is good, too: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30272030-ethics-in-the-r...
Negroponte also goes around demanding people refer to him as the father of the netbook. This is not the first time Negroponte has destroyed institutions. Media Lab Asia was a disaster. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71fe/5e987a89dfb7a6e7dbb3dd...
OLPC was an unmitigated disaster, not just for Negroponte but also for the world. The level of wastage of money at all levels. Just incredible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Criticism
I'd go with a strategy of malicious compliance on that one. Though I would probably add some extra titles as time went on. Any suggestions?
This confuses me. If Epstein's involvement was kept secret, how did it elevate his reputation?
It sounds like he spent a lot of money and got nothing in return. What am I missing?
Did they offer him special donor benefits, like naming something after him or listing him as an honored donor? Did they adjust their research priorities to match Epstein's preferences?
> the Media Lab ... consulted him about the use of the funds
As an example of Epstein deciding which research should continue:
> In September, 2014, Ito wrote to Epstein soliciting a cash infusion to fund a certain researcher, asking, “Could you re-up/top-off with another $100K so we can extend his contract another year?” Epstein replied, “yes.”
The Media Lab also kowtowed by allowing him to make contributions even though "Epstein was listed in the university’s central donor database as disqualified".
What word would you use to describe the examples given in the article?
"Kowtow" means to act in a submissive manner. Is your argument really that Epstein was so submissive to the Media Lab that he could not have refused to donate the money? Because that makes no sense.
My argument about that specific anecdote, that Ito called Epstein & Epstein delivered $100k, on demand, for exactly the purposes Ito requested, is that it is more supportive of the idea Epstein did MIT's bidding than the other way around. (I'd still not use the word "kowtow", but the other posters brought that word & that anecdote up.)
And still, none of the details in this article (or others) suggest MIT Media Lab or Joi Ito were "kowtowing" to Epstein, by the definition of "kowtow". It's poor, misleading, derogatory word choice implying things other than what is in evidence.
(Unless, of course, someone can point out some cases where MIT people were "excessively subservient" or "worshipful" towards Epstein. I'd still welcome new information!)
Some peoples' attitude seems to be, "these people were bad, hence we can and should use derogatory exaggerations towards them, without concern for the details".
I think instead it's especially important to be precise & accurate when criticizing people, or assigning them a sticky "shunned"/"unethical" status.
Can you point out the incidents/paragraphs where you see those, if I've missed them?
Meeting with researchers and giving input into their work is “special donor benefit”.
But it's not "naming something after him or listing him as an honored donor". A meeting with some willing subset of the faculty is a "donor benefit", sure, but far reduced from what a large donor normally gets, and not "special" to the point of "kowtowing" – the characterization to which I've objected.
Farrow even couches this implication of influence with the qualifier "apparently" – as in, "it appears this way but I'm not saying for certain". That single visit sparked arguments inside the Lab that likely swayed many against any of Epstein's priorities – spreading the understanding his
And, concerned staff separated Epstein from the "model" "assistants" who would normally accompany him into "any room" for the duration of the meeting(s), and spoke with those women to verify their welfare.
Again: that looks to me like the opposite of "kowtowing". The Media Lab set conditions for his involvement, to minimize any spillover benefits to Epstein, and Epstein – desperate as he was – agreed to their conditions.
First, it criminalizes actual pedophiles, who in most cases do not abuse children. Accordingly, most child sex abusers are not pedophiles.
Second, pedophilia is generally defined as a sexual attraction to prepubescent children, while many or most child sex abusers (including Epstein) abuse postpubescent children.
For the tech crowd here familiar with venture capital, it would be like one of the top branded VC's being the first money in to your startup. It's a strong positive signal to others.
This NYTimes article has plenty of detail:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-...
So while MIT itself may have ample funding from non shady sources, Perhaps this institution doesn’t. Or perhaps it does and the people working there just want to prove their worth by securing funding (which is what most university administrators are incentivized to do).
Most universities don’t have something like Lincoln Labs, which is literally a DoD research center: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory
This appears to be sarcasm, but I think most of the country would unironically agree with this. Trying to slander MIT for taking money from DoD/DoE really puts you in a bubble.
1) impossible prestige-for-cash if Epstein's involvement is kept secret
2) the weird way in which Gates is involved
check out my interpretation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904781
I'd like to suggest that y'all are almost tripping over the connection that Epstein was possibly trying to get compromising material on researchers working on US military technology projects and then looking at it, going 'huh?' and wandering off again.
We have a justice system. If you don't like the way it works, go fix it. These witch hunts are an attempt to by-pass laws and ruin people's lives based on emotions, not facts.
Just look at what Louis CK has to go through, because somebody completely unrelated to him, was a piece of shit. If he jerked off and made some women uncomfortable in isolation, it'd be a funny 2 second mention and he'd be immediately forgiven, but because there was a Weinstein tsunami of outrage, now Louis has to put up with a mountain of shit.
Bill Gates is wisely avoiding becoming the Louis CK of this particular situation.
- Members of the Media Lab knew at least some of Mr. Epstein's transgressions (to the point that some of them were concerned he may have brought trafficked women into the lab)
- Subsequently solicited funds from him, despite knowledge of these transgressions
- Actively concealed the source of these funds
I googled around a bit, and maybe didn't find the entanglements that you're referring to. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I could only find that Harvard accepted money before knowledge of Mr. Epstein's attacks could be expected to be publicly known [1]. Articles also mention personal relationships that Mr. Epstein had with individuals at Harvard. However, those don't seem to have involved Harvard the institution directly.
Again, I could have missed something, but these seem to be different situations. And it makes sense that the Media Lab would attract more attention in this case than Harvard.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/07/11/harvar...
Perhaps I am too naive but what is wrong with accepting a donation from a person you didn't know was a criminal?
But I think we should take care not to transfer blame to everyone who ever ate dinner with Epstein, went to his house, or took his phone call. Especially someone like Bill Gates, who deserves the benefit of the doubt in my opinion.
Once, I was on a frisbee team with a man who is now serving 4 consecutive lifetime sentences for child abuse. The great quandary of abusers is their ability to seem upstanding and normal. Epstein fooled a lot of people and it doesn’t mean they were complicit in or suspicious of his sins.
The details of the sex ring, the Lolita Express, the witness intimidation, even the shape of Epstein’s thing were extremely well known publicly in 2010, but Bill Gates didn’t care.
[1]: https://twitter.com/jordanuhl/status/1170170356965007362?s=2...
A spokesperson for Gates said that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.” A source close to Gates said that the entrepreneur has a long-standing relationship with the lab, and that anonymous donations from him or his foundation are not atypical. Gates has previously denied receiving financial advisory services from Epstein; in August, CNBC reported that he he met with Epstein in New York in 2013, to discuss “ways to increase philanthropic spending.”
> Second, it is now clear that senior members of the administration were aware of gifts the Media Lab received between 2013 and 2017 from Jeffrey Epstein’s foundations. Goodwin Procter has found that in 2013, when members of my senior team learned that the Media Lab had received the first of the Epstein gifts, they reached out to speak with Joi Ito. He asked for permission to retain this initial gift, and members of my senior team allowed it. [...] Joi sought the gifts for general research purposes, such as supporting lab scientists and buying equipment. Because the members of my team involved believed it was important that Epstein not use gifts to MIT for publicity or to enhance his own reputation, they asked Joi to agree to make clear to Epstein that he could not put his name on them publicly. These guidelines were provided to and apparently followed by the Media Lab.
https://fas.org/irp/congress/2001_cr/s091401.html
>Based upon the Committee's review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about government perpetrated human rights abuses than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in Embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports.
(I had to look it up)
A similar money induced blindness drives financial bubbles, Ponzi schemes, and dodgy corporate accounting. It's hard for people to see that something's wrong when they're being paid to be blind.
Not just money induced this blindness. Snobbery is real.
Accepting these donations is morally shady. Their treatment of Swartz is downright evil.
Note that MIT's central fundraising office seems to have not been in the know - I don't think this reflects badly on the rest of the institute (yet)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-media-lab-je...
Check out my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904781 to understand why.
BTW if one insists on receiving a forbidden pleasure, some controlled substances can offer mind-blowing sensations, by orders of magnitude more pleasurable than sex can offer and the society is hardly going to be so angry of a drug addict as it usually is about sex offenders.
The whole thing makes more sense if you assume Epstein wasn't truly in charge of anything. He was the manager, not the owner. It's a pretty safe bet that few if any of the blackmail tapes will ever surface, partly because of this.
Eventually they end up somewhere messed up. Morality is malleable and normality is relative. Unless you pay attention at every step, I can see how someone who's playing a bit loose with the rules might end up in a spot where they're doing truly awful things.
[1] http://solutions.refinitiv.com/world-check-kyc-screening
I don't have a dog in this race but it seems to me that Ito has to go. Poor judgement in accepting donations from Epstein is one thing, but hiding it from the University and lying about it cannot be acceptable.
(I'm not trying to excuse the people involved, just trying to understand the dynamics more)
How is that not a giant conflict of interest?
Their choice of his internal nickname, “Voldemort” was amazingly Freudian.
That is, unless I misunderstood 7 books and Voldemort was actually a good guy...
Ethan Zuckerman is another name people might know around here who was at the Media Lab. He resigned.
Zuckerman by all accounts was totally clean in all of this. Ito, looks dirtier by the day, and is digging in.
It seems impossible for anyone to not notice any wrongdoing, these are people, not stolen artworks.
(Via Philip "Tenth Rule" Greenspun [1], originally published in March '95 Voo Doo Magazine [2], The MIT Journal of Humour since 1919 [3])
Generation of Bits
Tales of shame and degradation in the Big Idea Lab
by Hunter S. Negroponte
Too Many Bits
The other day I was thanking my good friend Former President Bush (or "George" as I call him) for pulling some strings to get my brother out of that Iran-Contra mess, and he asked me if I knew any hot technologies he could sink his Presidential Pension into. In my opinion, the smart money is on filters. It's getting so you can't read Usenet without seeing that "Dave Jordan" Ponzi letter followed by forty replies from dickless wannabes threatening to mail-bomb the poster's sysadmin for the "innapropriate post." Of course, I personally have my staff of Elegant British Women pre-edit my .newsrc for me (God how I envy the British), but that option is not open to the unwired masses outside the Media Lab.
One way to eliminate the blather while keeping the First Amendment intact is to create active "Filter Agents," as I like to call them, that presort my Netnews articles and eliminate the tiresome pseudo-commercial posts. Can you imagine what the net's raw content will look like when all the half-literate morons in the U.S. can publish any text that their tiny minds ooze? The very thought makes me want to refill my glass with the '56 Chateau Lafite. America's Intelligentsia will need some serious Digital Butlers guarding our Offramp on the Digital Highway's Mailing Lists (damn metaphors) when this comes to pass.
The Big Lie Media Lab critics (there have been a few) have occasionally questioned the practical application of our work. Well, have you heard about the Holographic Television? No longer a device found only in the back of comic books, we've actually made this sucker work. An honest-to-god motion-picture hologram, produced in the Media Lab basement on a 2000 pound holography table by computers, lasers and mirrors spinning at 30,000 RPM. It's real! It works! Life Magazine even came in to photograph it in action (of course, they had to fill the room with smoke so the lasers would show up on film). Practical application? Sure, it requires a 2000 pound air-suspended rock table and a Connection Machine II to run, but hell, everyone knows the price of computing power and 2000 pound rock tables is cut in half every year. My point, however, is more mundane: we have created a demo literally from smoke and mirrors, and the Corporate World bought it. Even my good friend Penn (or "Penn," as I call him) Jillette would be proud.
In fact, I'm a few points up on Penn. You may have heard of the Interactive Narrative work that is proceeding in the lab. Folks, I'll be honest with you for a moment. I know as well as you do that it's a stinking load of horseshit. Roger Ebert said "Six thousand years ago sitting around a campfire a storyteller could have stopped at any time and asked his audience how they wanted the story to come out. But he didn't because that would have ruined the story." You think Hollywood would have learned this lesson from the monster "success" that Clue, the Movie enjoyed several years ago. But no! I've repackaged the "Choose your own Adventure" novels of childhood as Digital Information SuperHighway Yadda Yadda crap, and again, they bought it! Sony right this minute is building an interactive movie theater, with buttons the audience can push to amuse themselves as the story progresses. Dance for me, Corporate America! I'm SHIT-HOT!
Why, just the other day I listened to a member of my staff explain to potential sponsors that we had spent \$US 4,000,000 of Japanese sponsor dollars to construct a widescreen version of "I Love Lucy" from the original source. And HE SAID IT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE! CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THAT? Boy, I bet those Nips wish they had their money back now! Earthquake? No, we can't do much to rebuild your city, but we SURE AS HELL can give you a 1.66:1 cut of Lucy to fit all those busted HDTVs of yours! HA HA HA!
A Sucker Born
Last week I was off the coast of Greece on my yacht "Nippo-bux" (I put the "raft" in "graft," as I always say) with my close personal friend Al ("Al") Gore. He asked me "Nick--er, Hunter, how do you do it? You maintain a research staff of, in the words of Albert Meyer [an underfunded Course VI professor], `Science Fiction Charlatans,' yet you never fail to rake in monster sponsor bucks? I could fund Hillary's socialized medicine boondoggle in an instant if I had that kind of fiscal pull."
I told him that it's merely a matter of understanding our sponsor's needs. Our sponsors are represented by middle-aged middle-managers who need three things: Booze, good hotels, and hookers. Keep 'em busy with free trips and the slick dog and pony shows, provide them with pre-written notes for their upper-managment, and the money will keep rolling in.
Do I worry that one day some sponsor will wake up and say "Wait a minute--what the hell did I do last night? Did I shell out a million bucks to fund a LEGO Chair in the Media Lab? Tequila!" Over the years I've learned not to care. I could pull the cigar out of W.C. Field's mouth and sell it back to him at a profit. And he'd thank me for the deal. I'm that goddamn good.
Obligatory Plug
By the way, if you enjoyed this article, you can read it again in my upcoming book: Being Gonzo -- Life on the Digital Information SuperHighway Fast Lane. Buy one now.
[1] https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/media-lab
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20000823222608/http://www.mit.ed...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20000928224954/http://www.mit.ed...
Forgiveness is appropriate if the offender has learned a lesson and changed their ways.
I think it's reasonable to suggest that you should avoid taking money from felons who used that money to rape children.
Social norms are changing very quickly these days in ways no one expected. Look at the polls on acceptance of gay marriage prior to 2000 and today. There is a big shift, not just in the US. Hard to believe such shifts can happen in such time scales, if you read old sociology text books.
What is different today is how connected society is and how fast social pressure can build up. And thats having effects people haven't seen before - good and bad.
They have done good things. They have also done bad things. If I said what bad things, I would have a target on my back, so I wont. But suffice to say that there are upsides and downsides.
People are more controlled than they have ever been and thats why rapid shifts in opinion can be effected.
If Epstein hadn't recidivated, would Anand Giridharadas have bestowed a "Disobedience Award" on Ito for breaking the rules at MIT to rehabilitate an ex-felon?
Is a low-level drug felony "better than" soliciting prostitution (the charges on Epstein's public record)? What if the drug felony involves selling to minors?
And I don’t even understand how one can solicit prostitution from someone who cannot legally consent.
I don't understand how one can solicit prostitution from someone who cannot legally consent either. But Ito played no roll in laying those laughable charges.
As for why the gnashing of teeth now? I know I’ve personally been aware of the details of Epstein’s case for years, but you sound like a crank when you show people photos of a pedophile’s weird temple and rant about all of the names in his flight logs. Why now for Cosby? Or Weinstein?
Perhaps it’s finally in the air that these men should be held accountable, perhaps to an even higher standard, for their abuse of power.
As for university funding... don’t get me started! Also can we start examining Kissinger and the other criminals employed by Harvard? The ivy institutions have decades old ties to the intelligence community. (Though it does sort of make sense to learn about the history of US plunder throughout the world from the people on the front lines... ok I’m starting to sound like a crank...)
I don’t know what can be done but we should begin to reevaluate their undue influence on society.
Yeah, it's very frustrating. I wouldn't feel such resistance to the mods actions if it were known what exactly those actions were. HN is a curated space but not explicitly so.
M.I.T. Media Lab, part of a college with young people, accepted money from a known sexual predator with vast wealth and power.
Anyone who concealed this should be put in prison.
EDIT: I should clarify as I don't think it's necessarily clear why I think so from my post. Say Epstein donates $50M or some other large figure regularly every n-years. Now suppose that one of the people at the school accuses him of rape. So...now he doesn't have to threaten anything, after all not giving money isn't the same thing as a bribe right? So that girl will be silenced by the school, which will threaten to expel her or worse. Accepting money from a known pedophile WHEN YOU WORK AT A SCHOOL WITH MINORS is tantamount to condoning sexual violence and anyone who does so is a rabid animal and should be put in prison forever and a day.
EDIT EDIT: So...I can't find statistics on the number of students, but I know that MIT has a reputation for sometimes having prodigies who are under 18 attend campus. Maybe Epstein picked MIT specifically because of that (as heart wrenching as that is) - every one of those kids probably needs to be checked that they didn't get taken advantage of during the time period when this occurred.
"If any member of the US Transhumanist Party says there is a connection between Epstein and transhumanism, they will be expelled from the party."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Transhuman/comments/d0jprh/if_any_m...
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-transhumanis...
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6346750-COUQ-2009-99...
You may be dealing with a nice person or a business partner but don't know what they do in private.
Epstein got medialized and media are having an ad money feast on this. Up until this point (or rather 2005) he was a physics teacher and a reputable financier.
2005 he served a sentence. The premise of how justice in society is that you pay your debt. How could anyone who dealt with him be accused unless they took part in the sex offences?
Also, let's not forget presumption of innocence (until convicted) which is key concept our justice is built on and a fundamental human right.
Media absolutely disregard it on every monetizable occasion. All you need is an accusation and you're already painted as guilty. When that's cleared nobody cares. Someone should hold them accountable.
Of course, I don't defend Epstien's acts, if they are proven which seems very likely, everyone involved in the actual crime must be held accountable.
But 1. leave the others alone, 2. who's will hold media accountable for every case they treat a suspect as an actual convict and create social consequences for her before a lawful trial took place?
ah, so where are these "rational altruism" people now?
the problem is not so much a lack of "rational altruism" but rather "provable altruism"