Hacker News Reader

Comment by p0llard | Hacker News Reader

Internal email this afternoon from President Reif:

To the members of the MIT community,

Last night, The New Yorker published an article that contains deeply disturbing allegations about the engagement between individuals at the Media Lab and Jeffrey Epstein.

Because the accusations in the story are extremely serious, they demand an immediate, thorough and independent investigation. This morning, I asked MIT’s General Counsel to engage a prominent law firm to design and conduct this process. I expect the firm to conduct this review as swiftly as possible, and to report back to me and to the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation, MIT’s governing board.

This afternoon, Joi Ito submitted his resignation as Director of the Media Lab and as a professor and employee of the Institute.

As I described in my previous letter, the acceptance of the Epstein gifts involved a mistake of judgment. We are actively assessing how best to improve our policies, processes and procedures to fully reflect MIT’s values and prevent such mistakes in the future. Our internal review process continues, and what we learn from it will inform the path ahead.

Sincerely,

L. Rafael Reif

View on HN

If Xeni Jardin's claim below is true, Joi Ito needs to resign from more than just MIT:

"I told the @nytimes everything. So did whistleblowers I was in touch with inside @MIT and @Edge. They printed none of the most damning truths. @joi is on the board of the NYT. THANK GOD FOR @RonanFarrow"

EDIT: NYTimes is now indicating that Ito has resigned from NYT Co board, effective immediately [2].

[1] https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1170352857952002048

[2] https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1170449747041226757

What is Xeni Jardin claiming? That she brought the story to the NYT but they buried it because Ito was on the board? Why didn't she take it elsewhere?

Edit: I was looking for a bit more context than a random tweet. Had to search through a bunch of tweets to find it, but apparently Xeni tweeted about Joi Ito's connection to Epstein weeks ago.

She did take it elsewhere. Compare the NYMAG story and the NYT one.

She was involved in the NYMAG story? They don't quote or credit her.

I'm assuming so based on the tweet where she shares it and effectively says the NYT had the same info and didn't print it.

This is well-known now. Epstein cultivated powerful connections deliberately to insulate himself from scrutiny. It seems likely that he deliberately put politicians and famous people into compromising positions to ensure their cooperation (throwing lavish parties at his mansion, supplying the drugs and the underage girls).

MIT banned Epstein from donating after his Sex Offender conviction. Ito did an end-run around that ban (in addition to taking Epstein’s money personally which is a separate level of unethical).

Xeni spilled the beans on this (Epstein bypassing the ban, Ito’s involvement) to the NYT, which then buried the story likely due to Epstein’s political connections. Many papers and media outlets killed Epstein stories.

> NYT, which then buried the story. /.../ Many papers and media outlets killed Epstein stories.

So, I imagine many editors from NYT and many other papers has resigned from their jobs and their memberships in whatever professional organizations, boards, etc. they have been on, because of that? Or the press is not supposed to be held to ethical standard because... well, because they are The Press, so they are above scrutiny?

The NYT has very prominently been in ethical collapse mode for several years now. This is just another in a line of a dozen or so scandals surrounding their credibility, or rather, their no longer existent credibility. They're the biggest joke in mainstream news in the US right now and that's not an easy thing to accomplish while Fox News still exists.

There is zero chance editors and journalists at the NYT resign over this. There are probably some infamous tabloids with higher ethical standards than the NYT at this point.

Sources? I haven't heard of any of these scandals. And even this story could simply be the NYT failing to corroborate the more salacious accusations with more than one source yet, therefore not running them.

IDK about their ethical motivations, but they made serious errors in judgement.

They delayed publishing on Bush’s illegal surveillance because his admin asked them to. IIRC they had the opportunity to break this story before he was reelected and didn't.

See also Judith Miller’s botched reporting episodes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy...

https://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/the_new_york_times_humiliat...

I read a few more of Xeni's tweets, and wanted to get HN's honest opinion on them. It seems (to me) like a lot of people on Twitter (and HN?) are over-reacting.

For example, Xeni's pinned tweet references this other tweet (https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1165266579560521728), which implies that anybody who was ever at a dinner with Epstein should be considered complicit in Epstein's crimes. Take this quote, for example:

> I would like to not be sued or disappeared, but I would also like people to seriously register the fact that Amazon and Google CEOS/Founders were at the gathering alluded to in this Twitter thread. Their names are in the screen grab. Don’t sue me please. I have no money.

This seems to imply that anybody at this dinner (that Epstein) was complicit. Other attendees include Daniel C. Dennett, Steven Pinker, Marvin Minsky (yes, that Marvin Minsky!). Is it just me, or does that strike anybody as an overreaction?

I think what’s interesting is the question of how powerful people may be knowingly covering for one another. We can’t say from them being at the gathering that they for sure aided in Epstein’s crimes, but it might warrant further investigation.

> Steven Pinker, Marvin Minsky

It just sounds like you haven't been paying attention at all. Are you aware that a woman has claimed that she was forced to have sex with Marvin Minsky by Epstein on his island?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...

Are you aware that Pinker has flown on the "Lolita Express" and helped with Epstein's legal defense, a legal defense that led to him avoiding a prison term in a manner that seems aptly describable as "corrupt"?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/12/alex-acosta-...

If you were not aware of these things, please engage in some honest introspection regarding how you ended up decrying attempts to reach justice for them as overreactions on the Internet.

> Are you aware that a woman has claimed that she was forced to have sex with Marvin Minsky by Epstein on his island?

Yet the her deposition does not actually make that claim, but rather that she was directed to approach Minsky for sex. A third party witness reports that that he turned her down and was apparently complaining about the incident. https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/

If you were not aware of these things, please engage in some honest introspection regarding how you ended up decrying attempts to constrain overreaction-- and potentially defaming an innocent person who isn't around to defend themself-- and allow a calm deliberative process to search for actual justice.

I’m 38 and afaik nobody has ever sent me underage women for me to have sex with them, that way I could have boasted to an external third party that “I refused”. When you’re 88 years old (so when biologically sex is one of the last things you should be thinking about) and when one of your close friends “sends” you an under-age woman that only means that that close friend of yours knew what you liked and what you were into. And make no mistake, Epstein was a friend of Minsky.

And I don’t buy this “it could happen to you, too”, because, again, afaik not me not anyone of my close friends has been sent “underage girls” as “gifts” (for one reason because we don’t befriend paedophile pseudo-billionaires).

> ... that only means that that close friend of yours knew what you liked and what you were into

That's the only possible explanation?

Perhaps Epstein wanted to ensnare Minsky in a situation that could be used to coerce him. That's consistent with Minsky turning her down, unlike your version.

What’s there left to coerce in an 88 year old who had been pretty happy to take photo shoots with Epstein before and whom the same Epstein had in his pocket based on the potential financial donations alone? All I’m saying is that Minsky’s influence was at that point behind him.

Uh... neither of those things is exactly raping a child? There would be plenty to coerce.

I’m saying that when a close friend of yours sends you a child to be raped then I assume that that close friend of yours knew that you liked raping children, orherwise he would have sent you something else or nothing at all.

I think you're assuming "friend" means "someone you like" and the purpose of a gift is to make a friend happy.

But among the powerful, "friend" often means "someone who is useful to know" and "gifts" usually have a self-serving motive.

Lucky you. I am 38 myself, it happened twice in the last year, both times only to make me complicit. The guy is in prison now, though for an unrelated matter and the girls are fine, albeit still digging for gold (but at least on their own terms).

PS: Morocco, not the USofA.

Uhh... wow. Would be interested in some background if you can share. Crazy world.

Not on specifics, but the scheme is the same: Sugardaddy brings girls to party, invites his "friends". Somebody takes pictures and suddenly you are not just "friends" but "best friends forever" with police, state attorney and judge.

Please forgive me for presupposing that your life is nothing close to the lives of the people we are discussing here and your intuition is not a useful model for figuring out what is normal and what isn't.

Yes, I did actively avoid until now to befriend convicted paedophiles, apparently for people like Ito or Minsky that was too much to ask.

So how do I go about finding out if someone is convicted of anything?

I just googled how to get someone's criminal record and the answer is basically: you can only get your own criminal record, because of privacy. If someone else, for example an employer, wants your criminal record, you have to get it yourself and give it to them.

I know a few people who are easily 10x more powerful than I am. In your experience, how can I best approach them to have them give me a copy of their criminal record?

You don't. If they require any restricted contact with the general populace they will be either incarcerated or have restraining orders. If you believe the person should forever be in societies debt I guess the death penalty is more practical. (the last sentence is in sarcasm)

Why should we believe Benford? How do we know there weren't other incidents?

Given Minsky's well-established long-running ties to Epstein, I don't think we can afford not to believe the allegations against him. I find it especially painful because I was once a student in one of his courses, it was a great experience and I didn't suspect a thing about him - but you never know.

Never meet your heroes. Never have heroes.

> Why should we believe Benford?

You could start with because the claim Minsky went along with it was never offered by the accuser in the first place!

There is something to debate about how far you should believe accusations without investigation or evidence ... but this isn't that, this is jumping to hysterical ends without even an accusation being made, assuming the worst about someone whom-- as far as I know-- no one had even the slightest concern about, even in the face of contradicting evidence. It's an area that deserves more investigation and inquiry, but as far as I can tell-- that's it.

I don't know how to see that as anything but a straight up witchhunt where no one targeted could ever be found innocent.

My above comment is now, I think, my highest upvoted HN comment ever, even though it is a striking contrast to most of the posts in this thread. I suspect a lot of people are afraid of challenging the witchhunt.

Even if everything Benford said is true and there were no other incidents, Minsky still knew that Epstein was pimping young girls out at his conferences and kept taking Epstein's money and attending the conferences for years afterward. That's awfully damning.

> I don't know how to see that as anything but a straight up witchhunt where no one targeted could ever be found innocent.

Perhaps literally no one partying with the (confessed, convicted) pedophile and his suddenly definitely-consenting-and-of-legal-age entourage was innocent.

Specifically, the most charitable Minsky interpretation which we're being persuaded to take here seems to go something like:

* in 2002, Minsky asks Epstein to host an AI conference for him on his island

* while there, is apparently angry to discover that Epstein is prostituting girls

* later in the 2000s, presumably discovers that Epstein has now been convicted of prostituting girls

* in 2011, Minsky asks Epstein to host an AI conference for him on his island, again

...

Where are you getting the idea that Minsky knew any of it was at Epstein's direction or that she was underage?

The description by Benford was that at Epstein's event a young woman explicitly propositioned Minsky, he rejected her advance and was put off by the experience enough to remark to Benford about it.

It might well be that there were additional details-- that the offer was "Hi, I'm 17 and my boss says I need to have sex with you", or what not, and I'd agree with you if that were the case-- but no one there has suggested this yet.

Nothing obligates you to take the most charitable interpretation, but if you're going to claim you are doing so you ought to actually try.

I'll grant you that it sounds like it should have been inescapable to Minsky that Epstein surrounded himself with women where there were huge age and power imbalances, to the point of it being obviously creepy. But the same could be said about, say, Richard Branson or Donald Trump. It's a big jump to go from your original allegation of Minsky engaging in statutory rape and prostitution to 'he had to know that this guy running events for him was at least a bit of a creep'.

Maybe once investigations happen and disclosures are made it turns out that Minsky really did partake in those awful things but at this point they haven't even been factually alleged, much less persuasively demonstrated.

I don't believe you responded cjbprime's point here at all.

To make it 100% clear: the most sympathetic reading of Minksy's defense seems highly implausible: that he noticed and objected to prostituion of girls on Epsteins island in 2002 and subsequently, after Epstein's public conviction for trafficking girls and after encountering prostitution on Epstein's private island the first time, he still decided to host a different conference on Epstein's private island, this time in 2011.

The reading of this accusation is: if we allow that Minsky decided prostitution on Epstein's private island objectionable the first time, we are forced to ask how objectionable that could really be given that: it can't have mattered to him enough to go to a different venue for his 2011 conference.

Other relevant factors include how close Minsky and Epstein were. I believe Minsky's name and contact details appear in Epstein's black book; which certainly doesn't establish guilt, but should equally certainly justify at least some amount of suspicion.

He was never convicted of trafficking.

And there are no public records that indicate attendees of his events were aware that women were being paid or forced to have sex with attendees.

At least try to convict the dead man with facts and not innuendo.

I'm talking about Epstein's 2008 conviction after the in-all-likelihood corrupt plea deal, not his pending 2019 trial.

He wasn’t even charged with trafficking in 2008. Can’t believe I’m getting downvoted.

What specifically were the charges laid in 2007, and which charge(s) was he convicted on as part of his 2008 plea agreement?

The fact pattern for the plea agreement would lead one to conclude that Epstein could have been convicted for trafficking, and there certainly were rumors. It seems as if Epstein and his associates took everything rather lightly, which is something that the criminal justice system does not reward?

We are just now learning facts, many testimonies were sealed. Even the plea agreement was kept from the victims. Many victims are just now becoming aware of the existence of other complaints. Yes he did terrible things, but the full extent wasn’t clear to most people, including the media who continued to interview him after his conviction.

Epstein’s plea agreement is something Epstein had access to, he could have provided it to others on request. Epstein’s crimes being something others didn’t care about seems even more extraordinary when the worst crime in high society seems to be associating with Trump, at least according to Dershowitz.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/us/alan-dershowitz-martha...

Please don’t be so dense.

If a bunch of underage girls were unexpectedly present, and obviously had nothing to contribute regarding artificial intelligence, then 2002 Minsky can only conclude Epstein (as the organizer) welcomed the underage girls, or else Epstein (as the organizer) would have thrown them out. It's on an island, it's not a small town music concert where girls can jump the fence to skip entrance fees... they would literally have to swim to the island in order to ... attend an AI conference? Everybody present must have known what the girls were for.

How do you explain his experiencing and concluding this and repeat by asking Epstein for another conference?

to late to edit:

"Everybody present must have known what the girls were for."

"Everybody present must have known what the girls were for, including Greg Benford."

Did Greg Benford join more of Epstein's conferences afterwards? How is Greg Benford positive it is the same girl or the same event?

You would only know what the girls are for if there were private rooms.

quoting Greg:

>Typical Crap Journalism from NYT:

>>“In a deposition unsealed this month, a woman testified that, as a teenager, she was told to have sex with Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, on Mr. Epstein’s island in the Virgin Islands. Mr. Minsky, who died in 2016 at 88, was a founder of the Media Lab in the mid-1980s.”

>Note, never says what happened. If Marvin had done it, she would say so. I know; I was there. Minsky turned her down. Told me about it. SHE SAW US TALKING AND DIDN'T APPROACH ME.

So irrespective if people were at times in private rooms, or at times in public spaces, people got opportunities to witness the presence of these girls. If she could see him, he could see her.

Ah, the Orient Express argument.

would you mind at least explaining what an "Orient Express argument" is? I don't have time to read fiction novels.

Why are you assuming any of the guests knew they were underage as opposed to just young?

Why are you assuming that the guests in general knew they were there there for any other reason than the waitstaff at hooters is there for? -- To host the event and be attractive.

If things were as you seem to imagine them, why are the victims who have come forward not even alleging that?

>If things were as you seem to imagine them, why are the victims who have come forward not even alleging that?

Why are they not alleging what ?

They aren't alleging anything accused here.

One of epstein's victims said that they were directed to offer Minsky sex ( https://twitter.com/_cryptome_/status/1159946492871938048 ... and yes, I did indeed look before sharing the link to Benford's comment, did you look before spreading defamatory conjecture? ). That's it, wrt Minsky. They didn't say they did offer it (though a third party did). They didn't say they had sex with minsky. They didn't say Minsky or other guests knew they were underage, or that minsky knew they were involved in prostitution.

Beyond repeated proximity to epstein there has been no specific allegation of wrongdoing by Minsky that I've seen, but there seems to be plenty in the imaginations of the posters here.

Maybe it turns out those things happened but if they had you would expect them to have been mentioned in the allegations. Maybe they'll be alleged later-- nothing wrong with that. Until they're at least alleged, however, I think it's pretty absurd, and frankly extremely unethical, to just assume them out of absolutely nothing. Hell, if there was a victim saying "Minsky was a really bad man" I would have said nothing about the further speculation, it's only the utterly reckless outright fabrication from peoples perverted imaginations that I thought deserved any rebuke.

what bothers victim(s) beyond compare is not just perpetrators in denial, it's also those who blindly support people in high standing claiming there is no evidence while making no effort whatsoever to locate such evidence.

I would certainly agree if a potential victim of Minskky made a single twitter post claiming she had been "directed to have sex with Minsky" would look like some very misleading innuendo without actual claim of what happened subsequently.

However this is not what happened, you blindly follow Benford's conclusion, who is in turn citing the NYT, who is in turn summarizing an unsealed deposition. An unsealed incomplete deposition I should add, assuming the NYT isn't seeing the same incomplete deposition I am seeing. The choice of wording only appears suspicious because it is ripped out of context.

People like you are triggered by the seemingly suspicious choice of words "told to have sex", correct?

Did you or did you not before reading this comment actually even try to locate such a deposition? I don't know.

Part of me thinks you did, because you seem absolutely certain she only claimed to have been directed to offer Minsky sex. "That's it" in your words. How are you so certain? Do you have access to the complete depositions? If so, please share.

On the other hand, I think you didn't try to locate and read the depositions, because then you would have realized 1) there is nothing suspicious at all about the choice of words and 2) that in all likelihood, probably such a thing did happen.

Let me clarify 1) and 2), but first let me point out that incomplete depositions can be had at cryptome:

https://cryptome.org/2019/08/giuffre-maxwell-275-287.zip

Let me clarify 1) the circulated choice of wording "directed / told to have sex". This is a case between Giuffre vs. Maxwell, so obviously a lot of emphasis is placed on Maxwell's role in the underage prostitution scandal. Testimony needs to establish the facts that Maxwell directed these children as a third party to have sex with clients or targets. If the testimony merely said the child had sex with Minsky, then it would inaccurately leave out the fact that this was under Maxwell's (and indirectly Epstein's) direction. That's it. Your whole weird-phrasing-must-be-a-form-of-insincerity theory rests on the simple fact that her testimony is being ripped out of context (namely court proceedings in a case between Giuffre vs Maxwell.

2) regarding whether it did or did not happen

In the zip, go read pdf pages [144-149], note that those boundaries correspond to jumps in the deposition pages 128->203 and 208->247 so they are incomplete (as nearly all depositions in this dump). If you have the complete depositions, again, please share.

EDIT: a question to anyone who knows: I know the PDF file format allows for previous versions of a document to be contained within the PDF stream, but I am not sure how to extract or revover these, the reason I ask is because the file sizes are far from proportional to page numbers, so if anyone knows how to inspect this let me know.

The file sizes in kiB :

    324 giuffre-275.pdf
    468 giuffre-276.pdf
    204 giuffre-277.pdf
 121256 giuffre-278.pdf
    448 giuffre-279.pdf
   4744 giuffre-280.pdf
   2784 giuffre-281.pdf
    104 giuffre-282.pdf
 190888 giuffre-283.pdf
    508 giuffre-284.pdf
    236 giuffre-285.pdf
    932 giuffre-286.pdf
  10648 giuffre-287.pdf

Object to the form!

Your original comment read:

>They aren't alleging anything accused here.

>One of epstein's victims said that they were directed to offer minsky sex. That's it. They didn't say they did offer it (though a third party did). They didn't say they had sex. They didn't say Minsky or other guests knew they were underage, or that minsky knew they were involved in prostitution.

>Beyond repeated proximity to epstein there has been no specific allegation of wrongdoing by Minsky that I've seen, but there seems to be plenty in the imaginations of the posters here.

>Maybe it turns out those things happened but if they had you would expect them to have been mentioned in the allegations. Until they're at least alleged, however, I think it's pretty absurd to just assume them.

With your karma, I would expect you not to:

1) retroactively change your upstream comment to reply to my downstream question

2) retroactively link to cryptome where you previously didn't, in response to my questioning if you even invested the effort to dig deeper

> then 2002 Minsky can only conclude Epstein (as the organizer) welcomed the underage girls, or else Epstein (as the organizer) would have thrown them out. It's on an island, it's not a small town music concert where girls can jump the fence to skip entrance fees...

Aside, It's a tangent because what happened to the victim was crap regardless of their age... But, the conference referred to was in April 2002, and the victim was born in August 1983, so they were of age at that time. (I didn't comment on the underage thing earlier because I think it's a distraction to point out that it also looked like they were technically of-age-- it's always possible that there were other earlier interactions, but that's pure speculation and I don't see why anyone should assume such a thing unless someone makes some kind of accusation of it)

>...the victim was born in August 1983, so they were of age at that time

How do you go from "the victim", to "they were of age"?

You are replying to a comment that does not name a specific victim, the comment questions Minsky's choice to have his AI conferences repeatedly held on an island with groups of unsupervised underage girls, with pictures of topless underage girls scattered around the compound:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/contractor-jeffrey-epstein-quit-co...

This contractor worked there for 6 years starting from 1999 which means its representative of 2002

Also reread carefully what I wrote in my other comments, I never claimed it was Giuffre who probably had sex with Minsky, the deposition can contain testimony from other witnesses as well.

Edit: according to The Verge (obviously citing the same testimony discussed in another comment) is from Giuffre, and a witness corroborates the account. That would have been in 2001, when Giuffre was 2001, so before the conference, validating my questioning

1) how Greg Benford knows positively that Giuffre is the same girl he saw at the event

2) how Greg Benford can exclude any other events: i.e. Giuffre and Minsky possibly having had sex before the 2002 conference.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...

This assumes TheVerge correctly interprets the incomplete unsealed records.

The public discussion about Minsky stems directly from a particular deposition that mentions him, without it I don't believe there would be any more discussion of Minksky+JE than there is of, say, Hawking+JE. This same deposition is what is discussed in the article Benford commented on.

I acknowledged the possibility that there were separate incidents at other times from what Benford mentioned, as well ("it's always possible that there were other earlier interactions, but that's pure speculation and I don't see why anyone should assume such a thing unless someone makes some kind of accusation of it")-- but was pointing out that if it was a was assumed up thread then she would have been of age at the time. From the description in her depo, she would have been a victim regardless of her age.

I've preferred to avoid using her name gratitiously because having idiotic internet discussions showing up in searches forever utterly sucks-- it can feel violating, with the public assuming ownership of your identity against your will.

I was of the impression that it was absolutely clear what depositions we were talking about-- I don't see how you could think it was anything else. Unless I missed something, the only other mention of Minsky in the depositions was a pilot that listed him as a person that was brought to/from the island.

>- and potentially defaming an innocent person who isn't around to defend themself-

You mean "who is according to his own plans temporarily not around to defend himself"

Marving Minsky is probably "chillin" in Alcor, waiting for his mega-upload.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky#Death

These people will not be the first biological organisms to be reanimated: that would entail too much risk as a guiny pig.

More probable is that before trying to reanimate any of these Alcor members, the technology of uploading will need to be tested (at least on animals first) to verify the upload conserves the episodic memories of the biological original.

This means time will pass in the interim, and regulations will have time to adapt to such new realities.

An obvious conundrum is the concept of time in law. If you can pause a person's life and then continue it, what about crimes commited before the pause? How does the statute of limitations then apply?

It is entirely foreseeable that legislative bodies will decide it is the subjective experience of time that counts: punishments are of a reformative nature, and a person who did not evolve between his crimes and his apprehension has not reformed.

So yes, in such a future it will be a frequent occurence to accuse the dead, and there should be no shame in that.

So even if a victim of a reanimated person is by then older than a perpetrator of some crime, or if the victim is already dead, it is still in the interest of society to punish and reform the criminal.

People who laugh at the plebs and don't worry about crimes they commit in their quest for immortality (thinking that the ends justify the means, thinking they will have the literally last laugh) may be sourly surprised when they wake up to discover things don't work like that.

> Epstein's legal defense, a legal defense that led to him avoiding a prison term in a manner that seems aptly describable as "corrupt"?

Helping someone prepare a legal defense is not a crime.

> Are you aware that Pinker has flown on the "Lolita Express"

(1) This happened in 2002, (2) Pinker didn't know Epstein personally at the time and the ticket was booked by his literary agent, (3) the flight was to a science-related event in California and included other scientists who were also booked by the same literary agent.

Simply saying, "Pinker has flown on the Lolita Express" and leaving it at that is an intentionally misleading attempt to create a false image of what happened in the reader's mind.

> Pinker… helped with Epstein's legal defense

Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard alongside Pinker, represented Epstein in that case. Pinker is a linguist. At some point Alan asked Pinker for his opinion about the semantics of a law, Pinker gave it, and that opinion was cited in a court document.

Again, it's intentionally misleading to simply say that Pinker helped with Epstein's legal defense that led to him avoiding a prison term.

This is one of the worst things about the Internet -- people happily joining in on witch hunts intended to destroy other people based on no more information than a misleading soundbite, headline, or tweet.

You're proving the OP's point about overreactions.

> the flight was to a science-related event in California and included other scientists who were also booked by the same literary agent.

That literary agent being John Brockman, who seems to be in as deep as anyone - he pitched "science-related events" to his writers by saying Epstein would be bringing girls!

https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-inte...

Alan Dershowitz tends to deny the accusations with unnatural lawyerly wording and odd personal attacks - this has led me to adjust my priors so now I suspect there is a >50% chance that Dershowitz is a pedophile rapist.

Pinker being close to Dershowitz is a red flag to me.

The world is full of defense attorneys. They play a necessary role in our legal system, and I would generally hope that they defend their clients with zeal. This doesn't make them noble and good by any means.

But to claim that a defense lawyer being lawyerly means they are >50% likely to have committed the same crime as their client is questionable, to say the least.

The human tendency to direct our ire and malice in an ever-outwardly expanding circle of blame-by-association is exactly what feeds lynch mobs.

I'm talking specifically about the allegations that Dershowitz committed rape, not his actions as a defense lawyer.

I encourage you to read his statements and decide for yourself whether his refutation is credible - I find his insinuation that the accuser was attempting to extort him implausible.

Yes, it strikes me as overreaction.

I've been shocked to see in the past few years how common it is for nothing more than the implication of some unqualified 'association' between people/groups to settle folks' minds on some issue or other.

That some vague association exists between people/groups at most creates a demand for more information—it's a type of statement characterized by the giant hole in its front and center. Further, it's a type of statement whose information content is 100% latent until the hole is filled. It is a prompt for investigation—not an indictment of any kind.

Note: I have no comments on the particulars of this situation (in fact everything I've read leads me to believe a lot of people with varying degrees of guilt are being rightly exposed)—I'm only commenting on the general structure of stance-taking, information sufficiency, and valid argument forms in general.

> This seems to imply that anybody at this dinner (that Epstein) was complicit.

I was reading it the same way, until I got to this:

> I attended some of them [the same dinners] and I can confirm!

It seems like this person is tarring people for doing not more than she herself did.

Yes, to my this is an excess of accusations.

Marvin Minsky was directly named by one of the victims in documents that were published a couple of days before Epatein’s convenient death, and those documents were mentioning that Minsky had directly sexually profited from an under-age woman. In other words he was a paedophile.

I submitted an article detailing all this stuff on the day of Epstein’s death, it had reached the top links of HN in less than an hour but then it was ominously flagged. I lost a great deal of let’s call it respect for the people that keep this website up, apparently letting other people know that a now dead AI luminary was a paedophile is considered tabu.

Did it concern you that the allegations might have been false? Or was that besides the point?

I have also noticed HN mods engaged in blatantly political flagging, probably driven by deference to YC's tech industry pals. My link to the Bloomberg article about all the WeWork CEO's utterly scammy self-dealing shot to #1 on the front page, then was flagged by mods as "dupe" even though another link to the article was nowhere to be found. Totally killed off the discussion.

Let's just be honest here, the only people experiencing fall-out from the Epstein case are not Je-yank

You've noticed no such thing. Users flagging one of your submissions isn't "mods engaged in blatantly political flagging".

The WeWork story has had numerous huge threads—two major ones have been on the front page today alone. With suppression like this, who needs promotion? Ditto for the Epstein story, our only relation to which is nausea and a desire to hold it at the end of a stick, same as everybody else.

Please use the HN search box that appears at the bottom of every HN page and you'll have no trouble finding the major discussions that you're claiming don't exist here.

If only Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos had demonstrated a similar desire for remove from Jeffrey Epstein, maybe this forum wouldn't have to grapple with an avalanche of headlines about Epstein's close ties to the tech industry, but alas.

There would be an avalanche of Epstein stories anyway. The tech angle just adds to it.

Of course it isn't taboo, and the idea that we've been moderating HN to try to "suppress the Epstein story" or whatnot is beyond absurd; it makes one feel a bit sick.

I don't have a link handy but the Minsky connection was definitely discussed here.

I think it's sad that to even engage in rational discussion about whether and to what extent people were complicit in this, you felt compelled to use an anonymous account. I don't blame you, either, mob justice is horrible.

Almost as horrible as pedophilia being protected and normalized.

Far worse, actually. Mob justice is the force behind almost every human on human mass slaughter in history.

It's a far cry short of say diarrhea or malnutrition in terms of actually horrible things that kill millions of people every year, but as human-caused catastrophes go mob justice is many orders of magnitude worse that "pedophilia being protected and normalized." Sure, I'll die on that hill.

"Oh but think of the children."

It's very important to protect rational deliberation, dispassionate pursuit of justice, and truth-seeking behavior in general. Do you disagree?

It seems that a lot of people are of the opinion that Epstein did not get due punishment for his crimes and whatever jail time was given to him he tried everything to reduce it's severity by using his money.

This is true but instead of acting or speaking out against these loopholes in the justice system which to be fair are exploited by every rich/influential person convicted of a crime, what is happening is that people have got out the pitchforks and they want to burn everyone who ever associated with Epstein. A mere association or even a suspicion of association is being equated to a crime. This is not justice this is a mere knee-jerk reaction to the inadequacies of the justice system and will do more harm than good.

This is mob justice, I agree, but will do some good in the long run. It will serve as a reminder to self regulate in the future. If another Epstein comes along there will be visible distancing from him.

There wouldn't be a mob if the DOJ didn't cut him a sketchy plea deal. The failure of the institutionalized process is what has lead to distrust in the institutional narrative about Epstein.

The issue of the two tiered justice system which exists for the benefit of plutocrats is separate from and in addition to the issue of plutocrats associating with a known and confessed child predator, in exchange for god knows what favors. Whether or not they did anything criminal, these individuals' "mere association" with Epstein after his 2008 conviction demonstrates extremely poor character judgment at best, and makes it completely reasonable to wonder whether something more sinister was at work. Why did people like Gates and Hoffman, for whom the amounts Epstein donated were a rounding error, have anything to do with him in the first place?

The world is a much more fucked-up place than any of us can imagine. I believe Xeni Jardin, completely.

Interesting to see the choice of the word “prominent law firm” rather than “excellent” or similar... an appeal to reputation rather than ability. Essentially, what Reif aims to do is what Epstein did... salvage his tattered reputation by affiliation with a more prestigious, untainted one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com