But the problem is that doing so normalizes the behavior. Everybody who has doubts about working with the creep looks around the room, and when they don't see anyone else objecting, ends up thinking "I guess we're all ok with this behavior" and goes along to get along.
But everyone doesn't do it, and so we have this norm about how if someone X is an investor of Y, then some of Y's reputation transfers to X -- we assume Y did due diligence on X for us.
The problem exists because accepting morally tainted money isn't a norm. (I'm not arguing that it should be!)
Let's be honest - a lot of people in the tech community and related subcultures (particularly genre fandoms) are either ok with, or are ambivalent towards, this behavior, or have a lack of empathy which leads them to view things in purely game-theoretical terms.
When it appears in tech, it's usually relatively harmless.
When it appears in business, it can literally be lethal.
The same can be observed in adtech, Facebook etc employees
The number of YC based start-ups that took dirty money is rather large. You may be on to something there.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-faceboo...
In other words : normalization occurs when something is spoken of casually and without second thought -- nearly every illegal facet of Epsteins' behavior was done behind closed doors, a testament to everyone's knowledge that what he was doing was indeed against the law and abnormal.
When you continue to associate with that guy, you're saying, "People who do that are okay with us." That's normalization. Especially when, say, your day job is as the head of a pretty damned prestigious institution like Joichi-san.
There is, in principle, no difference between this situation and all of the museums and whatever distancing themselves from the Sackler family and their opioid money. You don't get to white-wash killing tens of thousands of people for profit by having a new museum wing bear your name, just like you don't get to wash your hands of trafficking children for sex, just because you funded some AI research.
It was/is. That angle of the story has received a great deal of attention.
The Harvey Weinstein shitshow happened in 2018, just last year. People openly knew what he was doing back in 2005.
The prosecutor who agreed to this absurdly lenient sentence went on to become a member of Trump's cabinet. He recently resigned.
Thats for the police to figure out.
I disagree, even if its proven he did it, taking money and hanging out with child trafficker doesn't mean one condone the practice of the trafficking itself.
Ohai, goalpost.
I thought we were talking about normalizing things, not condoning them.
I am trying to understand all the mental hoops you are going through right now to write that sentence in the midst of marijuana legalization right now.
From "reefer madness" to now, the accepting of marijuana came directly from people working with, socializing with and being exposed to people smoking weed despite the fact that law enforcement pummeled millions of dollars and jailed an immense number of people for carrying insignificant amounts of marijuana. Law enforcement did an absolute shitton, and marijuana was still normalized.
Hanging out with child trafficker, and accepting money from them and inviting them to your private events is normalization. You are saying to the world, that despite it being well known that this guy has been shown to have some socially objectionable character, that he is someone that you are totally ok to have around. Whether its drug-use, sexual orientation, or anything else.
With child trafficking, very rarely people want it to be legal.
>Hanging out with child trafficker, and accepting money from them and inviting them to your private events is normalization
Yes, it is normalization. The normalization of hanging out with child trafficker and accepting money from them.
Note that is different than the normalization of child trafficking itself.
There are could be many reason one want to associate with child trafficker that has nothing to do with child trafficking itself, likewise with taking money.
1. Normilization is when the police stop enforcing something
2. More and more people started to disagree with the legal status of marijuana
3. It became hard for police to enforce drug laws.
You are now arguing that step 3 is normalization. What do you call step 2? I think most would agree that step 2 is normalization, and its effect is step 3. If step 2 is not normalization, then what is it?
Remember - people truly believed marijuana caused people to murder and rape people all the way back in the 30s. In terms of public perception, it wasn't too far from child trafficking.
>Note that is different than the normalization of child trafficking itself.
It's not - you cannot remove those two. You can take parallels to how LGBTQ are portrayed in media. People credit Modern Family - which featured a homosexual couple - as normalizing homosexuals in our society, but you are making the claim that is"only normalizing homosexuals on tv." Thats ridiculous - the two are inexorably linked. It's not what happened.
It showed people that if you are gay, you no longer have to live in hiding, that people will accept you, and you can live this "happy sitcom" life.
If I am a child trafficker, and I see this guy Epstein shaking hands and kissing babies with a top academic, how is that not sending the message that "hey we know you kidnap kids, but we don't mind, come to our dinner"? Isn't that normalization?
In regards in marijuana, More and more people started to disagree with the legal status of marijuana is not because the police lessen their enforcement but because people marijuana is not dangerous anymore. So yes you can say the step 2 is the normalization.
In the regards with homosexual, the analogy is : many people disagree with act itself but still fine hanging out with them. Because they the act of hanging out with homosexual and the practice of homosexual itself is a two different thing. This may normalize the act of hanging out with homosexual but not necessarily the homosexual itself.
If I'm hanging out with a child trafficker, does that increase the number of child trafficking to occur ?
While that could increase the number of people who hanging out with a child trafficker but not the child trafficking itself. The number of child trafficking increases when the law enforcement stop doing its job.
Note that child trafficking is still illegal but hanging out with child trafficker is not.
I promise you, a person in a position of prestige or power openly, willingly associating with — even benefiting from — someone who is known to have committed a transgressive act is definitional of normalization.
1. Normalization of the act of associating with someone that commit transgressive act
or
2. Normalization of the transgressive act itself
I agree with the first one but not the 2nd one.
3. Normalization of people who commit transgressive acts.
Once again, for the nosebleed seats: this whole argument is about how the Media Lab's taking Epstein's money, and welcoming him on the premises, conveys the message, "Well, he can't be that bad."
Remember how we follow the behavior of people more than their words, in determining what is and isn't acceptable? When people tell us one thing, and behave differently, we pretty reliably follow one of those over the other.
So it does not matter how many times anyone says Epstein was a shitty guy who behaved shittily. Every single word is utterly undermined by the press release photo of him and Joichi-san smiling and shaking hands, or whatever.
EDIT: So, while normalizing the person isn't directly normalizing the behavior, it's also kinda a distinction without a difference. A person who wants to behave like Epstein has been shown that he's still able to be socially accepted, even at the very highest levels of society, even if he does the thing that brazenly.
How, exactly, is that not normalizing the behavior? In what possible way is that not all kinds of "Eh, whatever..." over something so egregious?
This could happen if the law enforcement let it happen. The question you should ask is why he is not already in jail since the transgressive act in question is already is illegal.
Media Lab is not in position to put someone in jail or charge someone a crime.
Thanks for your time. I don't see further discussion going anywhere new.