The problem people have with Epstein's "support for science" is that he spent his life collecting influential people, and, in at least once notorious instance but likely many others, deploying the influence of those people to his ends, which included the trafficking of minors for rape. One reasonably asks, "was Epstein actually trying to fund science at Harvard? Or was brokering donations for programs he could brag about having a hand in getting off the ground just an easy way to create social bonds with the world's most influential people?" One then looks at what Pinker did for Epstein in 2007 and, probably, quickly finds the answer to that question.
This was also the problem with the MIT Media Lab's policy of denying named donations for Epstein while allowing him to broker donations behind the scenes. They were getting money from powerful people, because of Epstein's work. But MIT and the Media Lab's management missed what Epstein was getting out of the deal.
The only reasonable conclusion you can draw about the man is that he was both legitimately interested in furthering science and interested in acquiring personal power. That doesn't make anything he did any better, and we shouldn't say things like "well, he did all this sexual abuse, but he also funded science". I'm not advocating that.
But I also think it's overly reductionist and cynical to say that he was funding science for the sole purpose of insulating himself from legal prosecution for abusing women. It's just a ridiculously inefficient way to do that, if that's your only goal.
My broader point is that I think we need to be better about handling moral, not ambiguity, but...ambivalence? Epstein is not a morally ambiguous character, but he did do more than one thing in his life. Some of those things were good, some of those things were bad. The bad things unequivocally outweigh the good things, but it doesn't mean we have to erase them, or find some way rube-goldbergian way to re-evaluate them as actually sinister.
Which is also not to say that we shouldn't think carefully about the kind of power/legitimacy conferred by Epstein's activities. I think that's a legitimate and important discussion. But i'd find the inability to handle multi-dimensionality in some of these discussions strange.
We're arguing that, in this case, the facets weren't actually separate.
Here is a quote from a New York Magazine writer, quoting Epstein when he (the writer) asked to interview him about his conviction for molesting a 14 year-old:
> "Have you managed to talk to many of my friends?" Epstein had been supplying me the phone numbers of important scientists and financiers and media figures. "Do you understand what an extraordinary group of people they are, what they have accomplished in their fields?"
This is an attempt to intertwine the two aspects of his life that you claim were disconnected. It was not the only similar attempt.
I think people here don't want to believe he legitimately liked science because they think of that as a "good" trait, and they don't want a "bad" person to have any "good" traits. And I think that way of viewing the world ends up doing more harm than good.
For example, from an article:
> The Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker said he considered Epstein as an "intellectual impostor”.
This would make claims about his "extraordinary group" of friends make a lot of sense. He might have associated with those people thinking that it made him feel and appear to be an interesting, intelligent, overall better person. Seems like exactly what an "intellectual imposter" would do, more than someone trying to build a personal shield.
Besides, we all know scientists have no political influence worth harnessing.
> This would make claims about his "extraordinary group" of friends make a lot of sense.
I don't know, it sounds like a slightly better worded version of "I know great people, they're the best people really, and I am one of them". They're extraordinary and they are his friends => wow, that must be quite the great guy, or he wouldn't have those kinds of friends.
Scientists might not directly have political influence, but especially the very successful ones are well-connected and have friends in the media. If you have lots of money to spend and you want to buy good will, wouldn't you just spread it? If a journalist ever thinks about you and talks about you at a private party, what better could happen than a science guy saying "oh I know him, he funded our important research" and an author saying "oh, yeah, that guy, he donated money to some literary program" and a finance guy saying "wow, yeah, he's very successful".
I find that a much simpler explanation that fits well into the picture.
All I was really saying was that maybe he believed this himself. Like his mum paid for an expensive party and invited the cool kids and they were mostly polite and now he thinks they like him and he’s part of the group. Key difference being belief in his own delusion, before bragging to others about being one of the cool kids.
1. He exploited his connections to obtain a very lax sentence which allowed him to continue to rape children.
2. It damages the integrity of the scientific research as laid out in the article.
I have a bigger issue with the first than with the second, but I don't see how the question of whether he also had a legitimate interest in science is relevant to either.
A major point in this thread is that that makes no sense. The integrity of the scientific research here is fine. Is the suggestion here that there is a paedophile agenda to promote science and technology? Do we expect to be able to identify paedophiles because of their unusual dedication to the advancement of human knowledge?
The answer is a pretty solid no to both of those questions. There is no link between paedophilia and science.
> 1. He exploited his connections to obtain a very lax sentence which allowed him to continue to rape children.
Harvard isn't a courthouse. It is probably illegal in some way for them to revise court decisions. If the court gives a light sentence Harvard has to respect that. This point isn't related to Harvard.
Please elaborate, and include details of how those ways don't involve currying favor (using money and other things) with highly influential people and the institutions they are associated with.
It's not so easy to bribe a public prosecutor, which is why the extremely wealthy in need of a reputation bailout purchase it from those who are currently publicly reputable by virtue of the institution they are associated with (i.e MIT or Harvard).
The dimensions of people's lives are not as independent as you suggest which is why we have the concept of the conflict of interest.
Invest in local politicians by making dinners, hosting parties, etc..and slowly work your way up the stack. It's true that Epstein did some of this, but from a pure power perspective, he would have gotten better returns by allocating his science money/time towards politicians directly.
> The dimensions of people's lives are not as independent as you suggest which is why we have the concept of the conflict of interest.
To be clear, i'm not suggesting that acquiring power/insulation was not one of the purposes of his science funding. What I am saying is that I don't think it was his sole motivation, and that describing it that way seems to me like an over-simplification designed to other him, so that we can all feel like he's completely unlike us. People on HN like science and technology, which means he shares something in common with us, and I think that makes people uncomfortable, so they want to deny it.
There's no reason to believe his "interest in science" went any deeper than creating social leverage - at best.
Cultivating scientists, philosophers, and other intellectually prominent people is a far less risky and far more directly rewarding strategy than cultivating politicians - although in fact he did plenty of that too.
But politicians are usually considered sleazy, and someone who is courting them is clearly playing a political game and likely to be sleazy themselves.
Courting scientists and academics is much cleaner and provides exactly the kind of cover you're attempting to justify.
And of course no one should have a problem with othering Epstein. Considering his record, he's about as other as it's possible to be.
That carries the risk of ending up with a felony campaign finance violation like Dinesh D'Souza's. Epstein was evil, not stupid.
No amount of dinner parties is going to get people with reputation to lend it to you to cover the kind of horrifying stuff Epstein did. That sort of reputation cover costs money, and lots of it.
The idea that all his science funding was an elaborate ruse to insulate himself from prosecution is just not a very well grounded view. His chosen method of insulation was terribly inefficient with respect to time and money. He would have gotten a much better ROI by investing in politicians directly, the fact that he chose to focus more on science than politics makes it pretty clear that he had a genuine interest/passion for it.
I don't see why he can't like science for its own sake and be a child abuser. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
Some recent research suggests he might not have been that great a scientist after all. The story goes that he was an impostor who got to his position mostly due to his influential father and whose main skill was managing others who did the actual work.
Here's a bachelor's thesis from 2018 and an interview with the author - both in German, unfortunately:
https://www.christopherlauer.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/C...
Yes, everyone knows that.
It was horrible.
But that doesn't tell us whether he had one motivation or two motivations in donating the way he did.
I could understand if you were saying "we should focus on his horrific crimes, and not care about what his motivation was in donating". But that can't be it, because you've also been posting in-depth about what his motivation was in donating.
So why are you making this post? I really hope it's not that you're trying to make it so awkward to respond that you 'win' the argument. But I can't think of any other non-hypocritical motivation.
Well I look dumb. Sorry.
But do you have any response to the other 99% of that post?
> I think I was plenty clear.
Normally people, especially those already in the reply chain, reply to the main argument of posts, so I don't think it was sufficiently clear. I would suggest quoting the part you're responding to if it's that small a section.
If you meant it to be more nuanced than that, maybe include that nuance in your comment.
He didn't finagle shit, his CIA handler finagled it for him. And that person will never face any consequences.
> *"Epstein found aid from star psychologist Steven Pinker in the form of a 2007 legal document"
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
(disclaimer: I know nothing about this and have no personal opinion on the matter)
And even so, any one of us can hire an expert witness to make a statement like that. Especially big-shot professors. They aren't cheap I bet, but they surely don't cost 6 million bucks per line.
Though Pinker himself has said he regrets having provided that aid, so I don't think he himself fully agrees with you if you want to argue against it being something he should not have done.
Epstein's intrest in eugenics is pretty well documented. I don't think it's a stretch to think his special interest in funding an evolution research team at Harvard was directly related to his abhorrent views. Sure his funding probably has had some higher order positive effects but it seems incredibly silly to suggest that such a monsterous person was donating all this money becuase of his passion for science. His constant oversight suggests that he probably had an agenda and use in mind for the research and I find it incredibly hard to believe it was anything good/humanitarian. You also have to keep in mind this is not just a guy with bad views, this is a person who has wielded money and power to directly cause evil for a very long time.
1) even if we were all-knowing about what we’ll need in the future, we still don’t know enough about genetics to reliably “push” towards a set goal. Yes we know genetics plays a huge role in things like your body condition, your age, etc., but the degree to which those genes affect - and are affected by - your environment and at what stages they begin working, and where we should alter them, is so far almost completely unknown. Eugenics is grounded in the old idea that much of “you” is just genetics, but we know that idea now to be not just old-fashioned but outright wrong, in that there is a combinatorial number of possibilities enabled by your environment. It’s like calling the codebase of google search the same as the discord codebase because they’re both made of underlying C code (or whatever); technically true but also not true at all.
2)we really don’t have any idea what we should be pushing towards. Maybe right now we think that pushing towards greater strength, for example, would be a good idea, but maybe down the road we discover that one of the genes we made dominant actually makes us very susceptible to some virus strain, overall making the population die at a much higher rate compared to how things would have gone if we had not tried to play god. There are many, many variables you can’t even begin to account for; I find the words “Life finds a way” remarkably suitable to this discussion.
this is what's potentially wrong with eugenics, in the abstract there is nothing wrong with being able to choose genetic traits, but it will be left to the prejudices and ill-informed opinions of people not to mention fashion. Many traits that do not have anything to do with smarter, healthier and stronger humans would be selected for or selected against skewing the population unnaturally.
Would this have any deleterious effect - not sure. After all if it doesn't directly effect having smarter, healthier, or stronger humans what is the harm in - let's have an example - having red hair and freckles suddenly cut from the gene pool by 3/4ths? Probably no harm, maybe the redheads out there will be upset that there is sort of genetic vote to eliminate them, but they'll get over it or just get old and die so what's the harm?
on edit: to clarify - verged into sarcasm with my ending example as obviously I do think it would be harmful, although I can't really show with any certainty that I am correct, and just as obviously don't know that my scenario would happen - if it did I expect it would not be because most people chose against having redheaded children but rather for having other types of characteristics.
Nobody would wish cystic fibrosis, huntington's disease, or downs syndrome on their children, but that doesn't mean carriers don't deserve respect and dignity. The tricky part is how to promote healthier, happier, and smarter children without denigrating others.
That's not tricky. It can't be done. If you want to admit that smarter children are desirable, you have to also admit that dumber children are undesirable. You can hope nobody notices, but they will notice.
Ask yourself this - is there anyone you have ever met that would be willing to let their kids be a little bit dumber if that meant they would have the genes to be a little bit better at being a quarterback? Because I have met a lot of those people.
You raise a good point of potential tradeoffs, and intelligence is not the only factor to optimize for. I imagine most parents would optimize for health and happiness above it.
That said, it is unclear to what degree tradeoffs are required. For example, smart quarterbacks certainly exist. To me, this is an argument for further research into the genetic basis of health, happiness, and intelligence.
I find it interesting that the subject sparks such visceral reactions in people, and how these reactions differ across countries and cultures. I think the subject of Steve HSU is a great an example of this which will be interesting to watch play out.[1] US critics were very quick to assume his research had racial motivations, while in China the subject research receives a $1.5B grant.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/29/wake-controve...
I supposed because our ways of measuring intelligence are faulty, if someone tells you they will gene optimize your kids for high intelligence they must be using some measurement for what that is.
on edit: as I believe most human qualities have at least some environmental component it could well be that you have a gene that increases the chance of getting a quarterback, decreases the chance of intelligence and still end up with
1. a dumb quarterback 2. a smart quarterback 3. an dumb non-quarterback 4. a smart non-quarterback
only with different percentile chances going in to the process. Although if someone is a parent increasing chances for a dumb quarterback I am betting smart result is unlikely (unless the kid hates parental authority and becomes smart to spite them, which is basically what I did)
Putting aside the challenges of defining and measuring general intelligence, is it amoral to desire or take action to bring about a smarter child? It seems that some people hold that yes, it is, because this ranks and devalues dumb people. What do you think about this?
I think that it is perfectly reasonable, and in fact standard practice. Parents Intentionally optimize for smart children over dumb ones all the time using non-genetic means.
If you agree here, do you think using genetics to increase intelligence is conceptually amoral for other reasons? Alternatively, is your point that the technology isn’t mature enough to be ethical. Or is it that it IS ethical, just not practical?
For what it is worth, at least one commercial service is already available in the USA to screen embryos for non-disease genes which are probabilisticlly linked to lower IQ, by whatever metric the companies use to measure and define IQ. I think they started testing embryos in 2018.
https://genomicprediction.com/news/30/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/screening-embryos-iq...
Putting it aside - no. Having it in the equation, I don't necessarily think so but I can see how someone might because , as said, the way to define intelligence is not sure and someone is making the decision as to how it is being defined.
>For what it is worth, at least one commercial service is already available in the USA to screen embryos for non-disease genes which are probabilisticlly linked to lower IQ, by whatever metric the companies use to measure and define IQ
So, it might be bad this because obviously the parents are unlikely to have the resources to determine what measure to use, they just have to assume the company's measure is a good one. Just like the police have no way of determining if the face recognition algorithm in their new machine learning toolkit is a good one so they trust the company that tells them it will help catch criminals.
>s your point that the technology isn’t mature enough to be ethical. Or is it that it IS ethical, just not practical?
I think that it might have unethical results as a side effect - a la the machine learning facial recognition example, or less likely even unethical motivations (because who knows if a company doing this stuff can also have ulterior motives)
But returning to >is it amoral to desire or take action to bring about a smarter child?
As a general principle no - but no general principle ever exists, the principle needs an actual implementation. Many of the processes that have been done by parents over generations to attempt to bring about smarter children can be pointed to and decried, even considered immoral.
>Parents Intentionally optimize for smart children over dumb ones all the time using non-genetic means
Sure, and lots of the things that are done people point at and say that is awful! I'm not saying that maximizing genes for intelligence IS awful, only it might be, especially given we don't really know or agree overall what it is we're measuring.
While parents can reasonably see and understand the cognitive impacts that health, nutrition, and environmental enrichment have on their kids, this is not the case for genetic modifications, and this could be a meaningful distinction.
You betcha.
i don't think of myself as much of an epstein apologist, but as far as i can tell this traces back to him talking about wanting to have a bunch of children, which seems like a bit of a stretch to me
Sure, this article and "people's response" are indeed a reaction to terrible people driving science without any, uh, mediation.
The development of science from the situation of renaissance proto-scientists requiring noble patrons to NSF grants being evaluated based on ostensibly objective criteria was a progressive development.
The rise of direct grants by the very wealthy - for whatever they believe science should be - is a regressive development. It's a development that likely won't destroy science but one which has the potential distort it by moving results in the directions these very wealthy patrons desire.
And "one" would be kind of engaging in "what-about-ism".
You certainly have some corporations indeed attempting to twist results in areas like climate science or tobacco smoke. The main limit here is that companies spend based on semi-objective cost benefits so most companies want to look better hire public relations agencies rather than paying for science but see notable except above.
Sure, I don't which different kinds of science distortion worst but it's certainly remarkable the different arguments which phenomena like Epstein's efforts aren't really a problem.
I think the philanthropic distortion of science is such a small negative effect it is not worth considering at all.
That’s not clear at all. In fact it’s a quite reasonable interpretation to think all his involvement in academics was a way to impart credibility to himself, credibility which was then exploited to forge relationships with powerful people who helped him get away with raping minors.
>'hoped to seed the human race with his DNA
I then gave examples of powerful men attempting to seed the human race with their DNA. I make zero justification of exploiting/grooming underage girls, that's an entirely seperate issue.
Love for science is one thing, love for influence is another. Science at least demands to be critical here and taking a look at which fields he invested is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. For science.
> individuals can pick and choose lines of inquiry
It is not scientific to think that would not influence results. Of course his DNA might have been just a selfless offering for scientific inquiry and maybe the pope was right all along.
Science can nurture naïveté to encourage impartiality. But sometimes you need to know when to drop it.
No one is black or white, they are just shades of grey.
> This is just an ambiguity we have to live with.
This just isn't true. I'm quite sure that Epstein supported what he thought was good science. I'm also quite sure that Epstein had opinions about why his treatment of girls was justified. We do not have to accept that people who have violated our basic ideas about humanity should be allowed to do science. The most obvious example is the controversy around what to do with the results of the Nazi / Unit 731 human torture / experiments[1]. Both the idea that Epstein should be allowed to fund research and the idea that he should not are ethical positions. We should not pretend we don't have a choice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Mod...
Science is permissionless. The ethical restrictions of the research are good enough to monitor and remain vigilant about.
The idea of whitelisting transactions is misguided.
Is that what we are going for here? I'm trying to understand if there is something deeper than I'm perceiving.
I think ultimately this is a situation where the process is the product. There is no end goal really. People just feel good about themselves for annihilating the transgressors. People do not feel good about conflicted situations or living with realities.
Someone that raped is in prison for rape. Their funds are not subject to civil or criminal forfeiture, and it wouldn’t make sense for it to be, so explain the expectations of illiquidity here.
It would make sense to me. Take away all the luxuries from those who commit the vilest of offences; use the money/resources for those not committing atrocities.
Could you expand on why you feel rich people who are convicted of rape should be allowed to enjoy massive wealth status and control of resources far beyond their needs. Isn't putting people back to zero, with support to continue in a societally beneficial way (healthcare, housing, food, education) a proper reaction?
Even the 6th amendment which has been used to circumvent the 5th amendment in civil forfeiture still requires the property being related to the alleged or actual action, and anyone wealthy enough can undo a civil forfeiture. Criminal forfeiture has a much higher bar of review and also wouldn't be able to be part of your version of reality.
It is not a prerequisite that prisons are full of people that own nothing and return to society with little ability to acquire anything, while people that do own things are able to avoid prison because their lawyers understand the law than the prosecutors. That's just what has become commonplace and is familiar. But the prisons or conviction itself does not strip people of their property titles, when the title is unrelated, and when wealthier people do wind up in prison they do not have the same level of inconvenience in prison or when returning to society, as they don't need as much external infrastructure to get by.
>Prosperity preaching //
I think you've got it flipped. I'm not saying financial gain comes to those who 'believe' (I assume we're meaning those who are beneficial in society; indeed to some extent I think it's the opposite) but that justice should strip at least some of the cushion from the wealthy who are convicted of the most heinous crimes.
Yes, I realise that might not be consistent with USA constitutional law - but that doesn't necessarily show it to be a wrong course.
Basically I agree with your last paragraph and seek to equalise things - make leaving prison less onerous for the underprivileged and more for those for whom it causes little hindrance.
Why morally shouldn't punishment of convicted offenders sell to bring them down financially to a basic level?
To be crystal clear, i'm not arguing that he shouldn't be ostracized, or that Harvard should have let him donate. I'm just arguing against over-simplifying his identity because we don't want to share anything in common with him (liking science).
There is a long history of great scientific advancements being made by otherwise unsavory people. Werner Von Braun, Ronald Fisher, Francis Galton, just off the top of my head. By all accounts these people legitimately loved science and reason and also held otherwise abhorrent views, and in some cases took abhorrent actions. This is just an ambiguity we have to live with.