Epstein's Ugly World of Science | Hacker News Reader

Epstein's Ugly World of Science

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Thank you for articulately describing an ugly part of the world of science that I've seen over the last 40 years. I appreciate your "There but for the grace of God" thought. If I were a bigger star, I can only hope that I would have behaved better than some of those big stars.

I dunno if my Uni dodged the bullet because it was one step down in status or if it was the shitty airport.

Whichever it is, i'll be forever grateful for shitty airport and train-access cut

Related PR:

  From the prideful according to his ability, to the grateful according to their need

(How nice it might be to have to prideful preferentially take up STEMM jobs and the grateful every other kind of career?)

The mechanics of the cancellation by the guilt of association should be reconsidered. The focus needs to be on the ones who are accused of crimes or accused of obstructing justice at the justice system level which enabled this to continue for so many years. It may be another unpopular opinion but I also think more focus should be on his execution. There is enough circumstantial evidence to support the idea that he was given a summary execution. After all, any scientist who took money or was targeted by his network was only able to do that because he was not kept in prison. The lack of a trial, the questionable death of the main defendant, all of it creates an atmosphere of secrecy which enables the redactions on files released publicly to become sort of weaponized. The focus is kept everywhere but the people named most often or the redacted names who should be held accountable and face due process without being summarily executed.

I am quite black pilled on this but this shit probably won't go anywhere because a certain country is heavily implicated in the operation and the media is very very hard trying not to say that name.

Trump is now preparing to fight Iran on their behalf lmao.

I have no respect for any of these goons anymore. Those people asking him for advice in emails AFTER his conviction. Frankly they all should be fired but probably won't and it shows the justice system is mostly for the plebs.

The whole thing in every contact made as part of it is a national security problem. He wasn't making CP to satisfy his kink. It was his job as a blackmailer and intelligence asset. Or if you prefer, kompromat vendor, rather than asset.

In other words it doesn't have to be child rape to be a serious national security matter.

Who specifically has been cancelled that you think should not have been cancelled? I'm talking substantial job loss or something.

What I instead see is leaders at various institutions keeping their jobs despite emails demonstrating their active involvement in sending young women to Epstein.

I remember somewhere around 2014 or 2015, when Reddit was being split by the gender wars and I picked the "woke" side (and by "woke" I mean "not willing to harass women for stupid shit"). People were talking about these really reactionary academics, and while I agreed with them that they were A Problem, I didn't entirely see how it was connected to the stupid culture war shit going on in, say, the gaming space. Turns out it was all caused by one really well-connected finance scammer with a private island and no conscience.

Jeffrey Epstein will go down in history as the man who broke America from beyond the grave.

That's a little bit too tidy for me.

> Turns out it was all caused by one really well-connected finance scammer with a private island and no conscience.

I wouldn't bet on Epstein being a one off. Probably a major player if not the biggest though.

I think this wave of guilt-by-association is starting to go a bit too far. There were some douchebags around Epstein, for sure. But knowing a douchebag, taking donations from a douchebag, or even going to parties hosted by a douchebag does not automatically make you a douchebag. Social people go to a lot of parties, and money is just money.

Call out the miscreants and bad behavior in the Epstein files, sure. But be specific. I don't like these articles insinuating "the world is full of douchebags". It isn't.

Oh please, the actual files have these people not just vaguely knowing Epstein, but asking him for help with dating, using him as advisor in dealing with sexual harassment issues in their schools (!), actually helping him to get further connections, connecting him to girls, praising him for intelligence in public and so on and so forth.

Epstein credit with them went up after he was convicted, not down. They were perfectly fine with who Epstein was and what he was doing.

Epstein thing did not went far enough at all. Instead, the actors are being protected, circling the wagons against each other.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when reading all of these "what is the big deal about being in the Epstein files" takes.

Like, there are people asking for Epstein's advice on how to fuck women that they have huge positions of authority and saying that she is "doomed" sleep with them. And these people haven't lost any material status yet! There are people asking Epstein for help suing feminists who sought to share stories of workplace sexual harassment. And there are tons of people who have publicly said "I was never friends with Epstein" all but making doe-eyes at him in their emails.

And suddenly we have a raft of "oh is it bad to have friends" and "don't all men want to fuck 16 year olds" articles coming from all corners. Insane.

Replace "douchebag" with what you should have written, namely "convicted child sex trafficker, rapist, drug and weapons dealer, torturer and sexual predator", and nothing what you said is anywhere near acceptable.

Besides, the article does not insinuate that "the world is full of douchebags"; it claims that a surprising proportion of people in a very specific, small subset of all people—male authors of a certain age connected to the Edge Institute—apparently had no qualms associating themselves with a person of the aforementioned description. You make it sound trifling when you call it "bad behavior".

One thing I have learned from the Epstein files is that when someone labels themselves as “woke,” “progressive,” or committed to “class struggle,” you should not automatically take them at their word. People lie and cheat all the time.

True believers can make easy marks.

Weird take. To me it’s more that billionaires shouldn’t exist and trump is a pedophile

I used to think this sounds crazy but I am thinking a bit that being a billionaire corrupts you in the sense that normal things don't do it anymore for you and it's just more and more depravity.

Humans have been corrupted by power since power structures have existed, why would it be any different now.

The depravity also gets served up to you on a silver platter when you are at that level.

Most people are basically good. Don’t let high profile monsters like Epstein and his friends turn you into a misanthrope.

Weird take considering Epstein was literal rightist, racist and sexist to the bone for whom feminisms was the biggest enemy. (I mean, of course, he was abuser and the woke idea that abuse is something wrong was the primary danger to him and his associates.)

Politically, both side are in the files, plenty of supposed centrists, but the hell more right wing and billionaires and soft right wing is on it more.

You forgot to mention eugenics.

Ethnic Jewish supremacist as clearly evidenced by the email but very little reporting in the media. Complete racist also. I wonder if this was how he and his goons told themselves that it's okay to traffic the women from the former Soviet Union and other poor parts of the world, maybe they thought the girls were below them in every way possible.

Labels are like military medals, when people give them to themselves it's a red flag.

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