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Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

> Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch

Normally one would give the benefit of the doubt, but given the abhorrent acts people were perpetrating or turning a blind eye to in this case, I'm inclined not to. Hence this question of fact:

Unless there are credible witnesses attesting to the fact that he spent his few hours on that island eating lunch, the report should refrain from speculation and simply say "he visited Epstein's island for a few hours." We don't know what he was doing.

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> Normally one would give the benefit of the doubt, but given the abhorrent acts people were perpetrating or turning a blind eye to in this case, I'm inclined not to.

I think this is a dangerous way to look at things... Just because there's a lot of shady people doing awful things, doesn't mean we should tar everyone who associated with the person.

Whatever other things happened with other people doesn't really matter. Instead we should look at the facts for each case (visited Epstein's island where bad things had happened, and accepted money from Epstein in an unusual way).

> I think this is a dangerous way to look at things

That's a fair point. I should have said "while a small technical oversight such as stating 'he went for lunch' as a fact (absent proof) would normally not be worth highlighting, the facts of this case make me feel that even such small technical oversights should be avoided or highlighted when they occur."

By "the facts of this case" I mean the facts that 1) Epstein appears to have been guilty of trafficking many underage girls and directing them to have sex with friends or business partners of his and 2) this guy who had other inappropriate/unethical dealings with Epstein went to his island, for a few hours.

Basically I'm saying they should just say "This friend of Epstein made a 3 hour visit to him on pedophile island" which are the only known facts. Not saying he did anything, but neither should the report claim he didn't unless they have evidence. Just stick to the facts.

> I think this is a dangerous way to look at things...

When I'm walking through my hometown and the tall grass next to me shakes, I think it's a rabbit or a dog or something. When I'm on the African plains in lion country and see the same thing, I think it's a lion. Bad association begets cynical assumption, because it's more often correct than incorrect.

Thankfully the founders of the US knew the difference between judging what is in the grass and judging a person’s actions.

seriously.

When I was young I used to wonder how in the hell the Salem Witch Trials ever happened. It boggled my mind.

I don't wonder about how it happened anymore, I've seen it so many times it's old hat now.

I mean what next, anyone who takes a jet with Bill Clinton is having sex with an intern?

Yes, imagine thinking that people who rode on a jet where children were routinely raped, or who associated with a man convicted of soliciting underaged girls for prostitution, might have been involved or known about it themselves! It's exactly the same thing as 17th century hysterics who believed women were possessed by literal demons.

I think the claim that he was stopping by for lunch is important to report on. But it should have been presented as a claim along with the source of the claim, rather than just asserted as fact.

Yeah he got $60,000 as an unreported funding gift that bypassed normal research funding mechanisms and went into his private bank account and was actually spent on ???, followed by a $125,000 donation that apparently followed the same route in order to "support his sabbatical", and this is on top of the $225,000 that Dr. Lloyd got through official channels from Epstein.

The $185,000 made as alleged gifts to MIT but which went into Lloyd's bank accounts won't be returned by MIT or donated to charity, nor will the interest they earned on their investments from the officially given $850,000 money given over the last 15 years or so. And was there other side channel off the books funding beyond the $185,000 to Lloyd? Was he really the only one that saw huge sums of cash magically appear in his private bank account?

All interesting. Will Lloyd return the $185,000 or donate it? Was any of that cash declared as income on his tax returns?

So he says oh I just flew out to a Caribbean private island renowned for pedophilia for a brief lunch and nothing more, nothing to it, what's the big deal. Yeah... maybe that's what happened. We'll probably never know, but everyone that went to that island has a black mark.

Why did Epstein transfer money to Lloyd though? If Lloyd was taking advantage of Epstein's island, wouldn't one expect money to be flowing from Lloyd to Epstein?

Maybe he connect Epstein with high end clients, some sort of finder fee. Or it could possible be a finder fee for women if you want to make those allegations.

If you donate $5,000 to a university they will invite you to one or two events a year where they show you the kind of research donations have been supporting, some students who received bursaries say how it let them buy books and focus on their studies, and the head of the university gives a speech about their vision for the future of the school. Important-sounding academics and administrators will circulate and talk to you as a peer.

Or, from a more cynical point of view, they make you feel important/distinguished/part of their community, in hopes of soliciting further donations in the future.

I assume, if you donate $50,000,000 they knock that up several notches.

To be honest it's not even clear that "for a few hours" is fact. It doesn't appear to be footnoted or sourced in the report.

Visiting a private island in the Caribbean from your home base in Boston is a full day affair. Total one-way travel time from MIT campus to that island is about half a day. Seems at least as likely to have been an overnight trip.

page 12:

> Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008. He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence. Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and he has acknowledged Epstein in his academic publications. While Professor Lloyd clearly valued Epstein as a source of potential funding, he also told us he believed that, by continuing to engage with Epstein post-conviction, he could be part of Epstein’s rehabilitation.

The way it's phrased it isn't clear if this was a one time visit or multiple times. "He visited the island" is an ambiguous statement as regards one time or many.

It’s a 3 hour direct flight which can be a 3 hour trip in a private jet. But I don’t think you get to claim it was for lunch unless you can prove it. Why would someone go so far for lunch?

For the same reason you would show up at Bill Gates house for lunch if you were invited.

Yah, worlds greatest philanthropist and infamous child rapist are not quite equivalent...

If the type of guy who will give you $60,000 to cover the cost of your sabbatical invites you to lunch, but this lunch will take 8 hours of your time, that's still an excellent hourly rate.

(If you're willing to overlook the sex offences, that is)

I really don't know how you live your life acting like that.

Is it your belief that response somehow changed the point? Or maybe you think that response changed human nature? That somehow reacting in that manner changes mankind such that no one would ever be flattered that a rich and powerful person thinks they're interesting enough to have lunch with.

What about their wives? Are the wives pedophiles too? They sometimes went to the island with whomever. How many degrees of separation is necessary before you become just a person who wasn't aware of this rich and powerful persons predilections?

Lets call it Pedophile Bacon. Everyone is at most 6 degrees of separation from Epstein, therefore it has to be a number between 1 and 6, otherwise everyone is a pedophile due to Epstein.

I think what kills me the most is the implication through all of this that Epstein was so important that everyone should have been aware. I certainly wasn't. Until all this shit came out, I had _no idea_ who he was, or that he had been convicted. I don't spend my time tracking pedophile, and I would consider it a bit strange for anyone who does.

Imagine if someone like me is asked to go to lunch by their employer. And then this shit hits the fan, and suddenly you're being accused of being a pedophile because the Pedophile Bacon is 3 or less and you're at 2.

Maybe the guy is a pedophile. But him having lunch with Epstein says nothing about his status of being a pedophile. Because having lunch with a pedophile is not, by definition, what makes a pedophile a pedophile.

But you come in here with this snide ass comment as if it changes any of that. I don't personally understand. Help me understand why you would muddy the waters surrounding pedophiles. How many Pedophile Bacon's does it take before someone once again is presumed innocent until proven otherwise?

There's evidence of people being aware of Epstein's predilections. He was hardly secretive about it:

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/08/jeffrey-ep...

> There were lavish dinner parties with the likes of Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould during which Epstein would ask provocatively elementary questions like “What is gravity?” If the conversation drifted beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt, “What does that got to do with pussy?!”

It think it's fair to say anyone who was on his island, home or jet should be questioned by authorities about what they saw there. He was a child sex trafficker operating out of his homes and private jet. Those are crime scenes.

Not everyone who went there is guilty, but given everything we now know it's not unfair to question their presence in Epstein's orbit.

this does not make someone a pedophile. It probably makes them morally corrupt, but not a pedophile.

That's just one small example. The other big one is that he had underage girls around him all the time. That makes him a pedophile.

You're right, Epstein was engaged in a platonic mentoring relationship with scandalously young women who by many metrics were also good looking.

so elementary teachers are all pedophiles since they're around underage girls all the time?

A pedophile is a very specific thing. It's someone who is sexually aroused by underage children. More specifically, it's someone who acts on those desires.

that's it. That's the end. There are no other possible ways to get into that club.

If someone goes to lunch with a pedophile, knowing they're a pedophile, to try and get $60,000, they're morally corrupt. They're a shitty person. But until they start abusing these underage girls, they're not pedophiles themselves.

This is not a hard concept. There are 5 categories of people who went to that island.

1. unaware of his predilections

2. aware, and morally corrupt

3. pedophiles who were unaware of his predilections

4. pedophiles who were AWARE of his predilections

5. pedophiles who went to have sex with underage children.

The argument here is that the only reason you would ever go to that island is if you were 5. This is unreasonable, and it makes you kind of dumb.

No one made that argument. I said:

> Not everyone who went there is guilty, but given everything we now know it's not unfair to question their presence in Epstein's orbit.

That's it. I'd also argue that 1. doesn't exist because Epstein and his properties highly advertised his lifestyle.

> This is unreasonable, and it makes you kind of dumb.

You're responding to an argument no one has made.

> You're responding to an argument no one has made.

You say while simultaneously arguing 1 doesn't exist, which is the entire point of my argument.

I certainly had no idea who the fuck epstein was before all this went down.

We’re talking about people invited to his island and people he invested in. Not random members of the public.

It’s all in the MIT report. They knew everything about him yet continued to work and socialize with him.

> A pedophile is a very specific thing. It's someone who is sexually aroused by underage children.

Specifically, it's someone aroused by prepubescent children.

> More specifically, it's someone who acts on those desires.

No, someone who acts on those desires (for underage children, whether a pedophile in the strict sense or not) is a child sex abuser. A pedophile is a pedophile whether or not they act on their desires, and it's possible to act on sex desires that make you a child sex abuser without being a pedophile at all.

> If someone goes to lunch with a pedophile, knowing they're a pedophile, to try and get $60,000, they're morally corrupt.

I disagree, whether using either the actual definition or yours of “pedophile”.

Now, if you know that he's a child sex trafficker (and thus that in some way the funds would originated from the sexual abuse of children), then, sure, there's a good argument.

"well akcshually...".

Lets not, sex with a 13 year old post-pubescent child will get the same laws slammed at you. The technical definition is irrelevant for this conversation.

> Lets not, sex with a 13 year old post-pubescent child will get the same laws slammed at you.

In many jurisdictions and details of the other corcumstancesthat's not true, it will get a subset of the same laws slammed at you, because their are additional offenses defined for crimes against younger children. But, in any case, I'm not the one who started the terminological games (“a pedophile is a very specific thing...”), just the one who insisted that if you are going to insist on the “very specific” meaning of terminology, you do it right. If you want to say “child sex abuser”, do that; don't use “pedophile” and insist that it has a very specific meaning which is both broader (by targeted age) and narrower (including only active offenders) than “pedophile” actually is, and exactly matching what “child sex abuser” is.

I didn't know the private island had a landing strip large enough for a private jet!

It doesn't have any runway. You fly into St. Thomas, then take a boat (or submarine as Hawking did) over to the island.

Which was enough contact for the Virgin Islands locals to start referring to Little Saint James as "Pedophile Island." How much did people who actually went to the island see?

Yeah, VI locals all call it that and have for a long time. It's hard to imagine anyone passing through to the island wouldn't have heard about the scene there. But who knows. Even when we hear stories from people who claim not to have participated they'll often have stories about seeing very young girls doing stuff like propositioning people. We know from the flight logs of the Lolita Express that young girls were on flights with major personalities who surely must have thought it odd and wondered what underage teen girls were doing on the flights as hostesses.

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