Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

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This is an interesting read, but I don't think it's fair to judge someone by who they hung out with a few times. I wish we didn't live in a world where someone has to say they "Regret" hanging out with someone.

If you could not hang out with people that have made mistakes, you could not hang out with anyone. If you could not hang out with people who have criminal records, among the people you could not hang out with would be MLK.

I grew up in a poorer city where a few of the people I hung out with are in jail for long sentences, or drug dealers, or dead from drugs. Do I regret hanging out with them? No. If you run away from anything you are told is bad or evil you are going to live in a bubble. That shows cowardice and not courage. Better to use your brain and think for yourself (and not engage in the bad behavior or condone it, but not flip the bozo bit on anyone who has been accused of anything). Does that mean I'm a bad person? Do Emily Flitter and James B. Stewart only hang out with perfect angels?

He had already been convicted of child rape when Bill Gates started hanging out with him. Gates deserves the scrutiny here.

Presumably there is a lot more the NYT didn't report because it was unsubstantiated. You don't write these kind of pieces against someone super powerful for no reason.

I agree there is a lot they left out, but as I posted elsewhere in this thread, I think the Times actually went extremely lightly on Bill Gates. It read to me like his PR team authored it. Seems almost like they are trying to get ahead of some new information that may soon come to light.

What exactly went on in your head that made you in all seriousness compare Martin Luther King to someone who was at the time in question already convicted of child sex trafficking. That is the most obscene thing I've read in a while.

I don't even care about people who do drugs, but someone who exploits children, seriously? That isn't just some random mistake, let alone ethical protest against an unjust law, it's one of the vilest crimes anyone can engage in.

> it's one of the vilest crimes anyone can engage in.

You realize that you yourself are in all probability the descendant of many people who engaged in what you call "one of the vilest crimes"? But we don't even have to go back in time to see how your argument is intellectually phony. The current age of consent in Nigeria is 11 years old. The age of consent in the Philippines is 12 years old. Are you saying that people in Nigeria and Philippines are the most vilest criminals of all? I for one am for our older age of consent(although I think it ludicrous when we arrest 18 year olds for having a relationship with 17 year olds), but I'm not going to lie and say there is anything morally wrong with a lower age of consent. If an asteroid hits earth tomorrow and wipes out 80% of the population, you better believe that suddenly no one will bat an eye that the age of consent becomes 13.

I'm not defending Epstein—I have no idea the details, other than that a great injustice was committed by his "suicide" (murder or assisted suicide, the suicide without a qualifier is laughable) because that meant we may never hear the true story of what went down. I didn't know MLK either. I'm not comparing them. I'm saying that being accused of something or even having a criminal record is not a reason to not associate with someone, without using your own mind and thinking for yourself, as many of the greatest moral heroes in history are people with criminal records. I would have loved to hear Epstein's side of the story. But instead, some people ended or helped end his life (a gross failure of the U.S. Goverment), and so we won't hear it.

Now, perhaps the details of Epstein are horrible and involve violence etc--in that case, yes perhaps someone should have stayed away if they deemed the crimes were true. Maybe I should look up the details more before I comment, I dunno. I just am giving my take to say, slow down with the pitchforks.

First I need to say, I don't think "your ancestors did it" is a good defense. Probably all of us have horrible crimes in our ancestry, long forgotten, and it doesn't give us a pass to repeat them. I find "this used to be normal" or "I can find some country where this is OK" similarly unconvincing.

But something about this:

> although I think it ludicrous when we arrest 18 year olds for having a relationship with 17 year olds

I am not an expert but I don't think this happens. Long ago I read somewhere that US age of consent laws (which vary by state) carve out exceptions if one of the people is only slightly above the age, or apply a different standard for young people. So for example a couple of two high school students where one of them happened to have a birthday before the other wouldn't be forbidden.

We've evolved in the mean time, and we evaluate current events based on our current standards, not what happened thousands of years ago or what would happen in doomsday scenarios.

11 and 12 year olds are powerless in relationships with adults, they are biologically and intellectually still children.

There are few things that I think are absolutely morally wrong, but this is one of them. Those people from Nigeria and Philippines that engage in such practices are definitely vile persons. Taking advantage of someone that can't defend themselves is the very definition of vile.

> Taking advantage of someone that can't defend themselves is the very definition of vile.

I agree with this, and perhaps I don't know the full details of what he did.

But a common pattern I see in life (and something that I've come face to face with in a few terrifying moments in the physical world) is that people go into mob mentality and don't think enough about things, and switch to "out for blood" mode.

From what I read, he had relationships with teenage eastern European girls who were desperate for money. So the mob is out for blood and wants to go after him. But few people think about how to really prevent future Epsteins, and protect future children, and that would require thinking deeply about why were these girls in such dire straits? What can we do to improve equity in this world and remove poverty so people everywhere aren't vulnerable to such coercion? That to me is the more interesting, important, and moral problem to solve.

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