"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].
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?
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.
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.
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'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.
But among the powerful, "friend" often means "someone who is useful to know" and "gifts" usually have a self-serving motive.
PS: Morocco, not the USofA.
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?
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.
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.
Perhaps literally no one partying with the (confessed, convicted) pedophile and his suddenly definitely-consenting-and-of-legal-age entourage was innocent.
* 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
...
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.
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.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/us/alan-dershowitz-martha...
Please don’t be so dense.
How do you explain his experiencing and concluding this and repeat by asking Epstein for another conference?
"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?
>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.
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?
Why are they not alleging what ?
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.
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.pdfYour 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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Helping someone prepare a legal defense is not a crime.
(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.
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...
Pinker being close to Dershowitz is a red flag to me.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't have a link handy but the Minsky connection was definitely discussed here.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...